Poker is not even remotely as popular as it was in the mid-00s. Google Trends shows "texas hold em" currently at 1% of its peak in mid-2004, and the more general "poker" at about 14%. It definitely still exists, there are still tournaments, and it's still played by people around the world, but it's not a part of the cultural zeitgeist like it was ~20 years ago.

This is correct - in the '00s everyone was playing online, or playing after work, or knew someone who was playing. It was big - bigger than crypto is even now. It really was a fad that caught people's attention, combined with lax regulations enabling online play - it was a firestorm.

Which relatively quickly died off.