You can't blame all of today's popovers on cookie regulation, the HEY DO YOU WANT TO SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER????? crowd had them beat by years. At least the cookie banners usually only cover a small part of the bottom of the window and can be ignored if you don't want to interact with them.

If a website doesn't want to annoy you with a cookie banner, they could always opt to not use any non-essential cookies.