And they hugely sucked, and basically were a sign you were dealing with either a fly by night company or a corporation so faceless and shitty you'd never willingly do business with them.

It was literally replacing a hierarchical link tree and that almost always was easier to use.

Or you were told this one chatbot was “haunted” by a creepypasta character and was amazed that it would actually reference that story (not knowing it was just a silly program trained on its interactions, leading to a feedback loop).