I didn't know create-react-app was abandoned. What was wrong with it?

Nothing, it just required resources to maintain, which Facebook doesn't want to dedicate.

That's the naive answer. I don't think the promotion of Vercel in React docs and the discontinuation of create-react-app are unrelated.

vite exists? what are you even talking about

A lot of things exist. But to become a go-to standard a good timing is required. Next.js was getting popular right at the time Facebook abandoned 'create-react-app' template, and many people adopted Next.js even if they didn't need SSR. Vite didn't exist back then.

But this works fine, I use it for all my side projects: https://vite.dev/guide/#scaffolding-your-first-vite-project

Add in tailwind and a router of choice (I love wouter) and you've got 90% of what you need to build most applications. Vite is so much simpler than webpack and the rest that came before, it's a tiny amount of work to do this.