> I genuinely don't understand why people don't get more upset over hitting refresh on a webpage and ending up in a significantly different place.

Th web has evolved a lot, as users we're seeing an incredible amount of UX behaviors which makes any single action take different semantics depending on context.

When on mobile in particular, there's many cases where going back to the page's initial state is just a PITA the regular way, and refreshing the page is the fastest and cleanest action.

Some implementations of infinite scroll won't get you to the content top in any simple way. Some sites are a PITA regarding filtering and ordering, and you're stuck with some of the choices that are inside collapsible blocks you don't even remember where they were. And there's myriads of other situation where you just want the current page in anew and blank state.

The more you keep in the url, the more resetting the UX is a chore. Sometimes just refreshing is enough, sometimes cleaning the URL is necessary, sometimes you need to go back to the top and navigate back to the page you were on. And those are situations where the user is already in frustration over some other UX issue, so needing additional efforts just to reset is a adding insult to injury IMHO.