It felt the same back in 2012-2015 when deep learning was flooding over computer vision. Yet 10 years later there is a net benefit for computer vision: a lot of tasks are now solved much better/more efficiently with deep learning including those that seemed "unfit" to deep learning like tracking.

I'm hopeful that VLMs will "fan out" into a lot of positive outcomes for computer vision.

That is fair. I think it is a case of just seeing a lot if great talent rush to the "in" thing. Other systems are still being developed and that isnt lost but there is just a feeling if being left out of it all while still doing great stuff.