why does everyone have this impression that people are using react to render a website that is 5 divs and some images, like where is this perception coming from? do you have any examples at all?

any website that has any sort of meaningful functionality and communication with a server is mostly likely using some sort of framework.

Agreed. There is a _lot_ of naivety around how these frameworks are perceived, from people who have never used them, or who come from different programming backgrounds (i.e. not frontend). It's amusing.

Yeah, there's this whole meme on HN where React competes with hand-writing the HTML of your three-page brochure website, a website virtually nobody is building.

A lot of marketing agency development is this sort of brochureware, and to your point they usually aren't using react.