> Would they be grating to them in the pre-LLM days?

No, same way "synergy" wasn't grating before every middle manager started saying it.

They would be nowhere near as prevalent. All claude-user output is in the same style, which is really annoying.

Imagine if everything in the world you read was written by one author - and you didn't particularly like that author's writing style. Or even if you did like the author's style, it began to grate on you simply because there was no reprise from it.

That's the world we are shifting to.