It might be a vaguely generational thing as in people's preference being influenced by when they hopped on board. How the website looked when they first started shapes their preference kind of thing. I started using reddit over a decade ago and vastly preferred the old layout for the same reason Foni hated it. I hated the new layout precisely because I don't want to see all the contents all the time and I want to filter it by reading the titles first. IIRC most users who come on to reddit after new is the default preferred that over the old and the percentage of people who uses old kept shrinking over time. Now that I'm on mbin I've configured it to be like old reddit as well (not that it took that much effort).

Agreed, this seems more like a preference shaped by which layout you're used to. That would make it somewhat generational as younger users wouldn't be starting with the old layout, but some older users would also be affected if they started after the new layout became the default.

To add another anecdote, I'm Gen Z but started using Reddit 12 years ago. I prefer the old layout on desktop and even use mlmym to get a similar layout for Lemmy, but I prefer card layouts on mobile. I dislike the new layout due to what I would consider as excessive whitespace and the fact that it shows fewer comments by default, but I want to see image posts inline and use "Show Images" from RES for that.