I’d agree with everything you say about designers choosing to use flat designs without understanding the point. It’s definitely overdone and this becomes a problem.
But your argument for skeuomorphism is a huge stretch. We had ten years of skeuomorphism also showing it just straight doesn’t work in a lot of places. It becomes overloaded and hard to read.
But you’re comparing it to absolute off the deep end applications of the opposite. Why not somewhere in the middle? The entire argument you make for it is just that “well people understood what was click able etc” which is literally just basic design principles and nothing to do with skeuomorphism uniquely.
Why can’t we just expect UX people to do their jobs correctly? Why throw the baby out with the bath water in order to get a different baby we know has other issues?
I never claimed they were all trend chasers - my point was that it had a good place and then trend chasers over did it, and those areas are problematic. There is a place for it where I think it deserves to stay, but people have used it in the wrong places and overdone it in others to the point where the overuse had started showing issues.