The current fees aren't as high as many believe them to be. If you look at Mempool, that's one picture, whereas websites tracking average transaction fees report significantly higher figures, and some people simply follow what they see as average from those websites, overpaying for transactions. Then there are fee recommendations by wallets, and Electrum tends to recommend me around $10 as a minimum (ETA), whereas people often pay the maximum.
The fee situation isn't great, but it's perceived to be worse than it really is because of such things.