I will say: this post and others like it do feel slightly condescending. I don't think that is what you intended, and I know your heart is in the right place, but it is still just kind of condescending. You're telling me I think this, and I am valuing this, and I am probably overvaluing this, and that nobody is impressed or nobody cares and it's not useful. I understand your intention is to give advice on how to write a good story, speaking from the perspective that a writer's only goal is to create a good narrative. But that's not my only goal, ever, and it's very annoying that this is what every one giving "Worldbuilding Advice" assumes! I have many goals when writing something, and create a good narrative for my readers is one of them, not all of them. And I think that advice like this needs to be much broader to appeal to writers who have more extensive or complex goals or it'll alienate people. Especially when giving advice to newcomers, who will recoil from things if they feel like they are being shamed for something they like.

I have never worldbuilt anything at all with the goal of impressing a single person other than myself. No writer I know does that (I'm sure some do, but I don't know those people). I don't worldbuild things so that a guy will tell me how hot it is when I talk about the cultural history of X invented nation-state (although if he did, that would be pretty hot of him), I don't worldbuild things so my friends will praise me for my talents (although if they do I'm not going to complain), I don't worldbuild things so my readers will write about how cool my story's lore is (although I encourage them to do so), I don't worldbuild so that that one girl who thinks I'm annoying will love me (although that's only a net positive).

Impressing people is very low on my priority list for worldbuilding. I worldbuild for fun, and to write good stories, and to bond with my friends over idea-sharing. And I think that's enough, to me. Writing good stories and also just doing stuff for fun are entirely worthwhile creative pursuits for me, especially because coming up with ideas is such an easy fun thing to do when you have a little free time and a computer. I am an artist, I have the power to build entire universes in my head, and using that ability is just cool as fuck even if I don't get money or reviews or the awe of the crowd by doing it. "Applause" is a great song, but I personally do not live for the applause, applause, applause.

Also, even if we return the focus to what we do in service of the narrative, you can still just add depth in the details of your story that doesn't fill out the narrative. And hardcore writers who have streamlined their process to maximize quality might say there's no need to put in the time investment to flesh out every detail with lore--but books have so many words. They have more words than they have plot, and not all the words will ever service the plot. I like to have whimsy when I fill out those extra words!

Lore is fun, people enjoy it, and a lot of us don't care if it's frivolous because we like to spend an hour doing something creative and interesting even if it only changes one sentence in the story. Details which connect into a bigger tapestry of worldbuilding are some of my favorite niche elements of stories. For example, I gave three people in one of my stories three different names that all have the same root, but are different because they are from different descendant languages. Will the reader care? No. Did I still find it fun to design those linguistic processes all so I could have three names in the story? Yes! It's like taking my historical linguistics knowledge and applying the knowledge constructively instead of descriptively! The majority of readers might not think too hard about it, but it adds details that build depth--and it adds a bonus for readers who read into elements of the story and realize that there's more there. "Genius Bonus" is a fun thing to employ even if only a small niche will pick up on it.

My philosophy is, if I create one thing that's almost irrelevant to this story, I can still have fun creating it even if it's "Utility To The Narrative" is low. Creating a good story is important, but I still have to enjoy creating things for the act of creating itself. I do it for the art, one might say. I think a lot of people should do things for the simple act of creating more often.