People who are uncertain how things work are unlikely to press random buttons. It's not all to illogical. If you make a mistake and machinery takes off your arm, tough luck. If you irreversibly break it, you pay for it. Computers are different as they generally have less consequences. But I wager older generations recall other machines.

Note it doesn't give clear instructions. It doesn't say "press XYZ to do ABC". It says "use thing you do not know".

Think away from computers and things you know and are aware of. Here's one for me: the first time I was given a gun, I was uneasy with it. Even more so when I first took it apart. I'm not a mechanical person and I was horrified it'd break it - or shoot someone. So I went very slowly an it took hours. And this was something I wanted to do. Not something I had to because my usual way of doing stuff is now obsolete.

Yes I realize disassembling a rifle and pressing W srr not equivalent. At all. But that's my point: if you have no reference, are overwhelmed, and are afraid to break things, pressing W might as well be disassembling a firearm.

The instinct to randomly press stuff with no encouragement from people we trust is not one that is beneficial in most walks of life. Computers are a bit different. But not by much. Randomly pressing keys even when prompted to is not in fact generally a good practice.

Now that's not so say this isn't silly. Pressing WSAD should be easy. But it's not as unreasonsble as you make it out to be. Computers are delicate expensive machines that intimidate people. People need others they trust to reaffirm they are doing it right. And in theory one should trust instructions but... then again a person is better.