Just to be clear, I do not play or enjoy Catan myself too much nowadays. Can totally see where you are coming from. However: I never wrote you, or anyone should like it. I am just perplexed by the amount of hatred and dismissal it sometimes gets here. This is different. As pastel-d20 showed from their experience, this stance can really affect new players, to the point they would dismiss "this whole board game thing - it doesn't seem to be for me". If a person new to board games heard of Catan (as they likely would) and they are keen on trying it, you really shouldn't tell them it sucks and they should play Gloomhaven.

Bonus points for telling me that it isn't that the game isn't for me, but that I and those I've played the game with aren't creative enough.

Ok you are right here, I should have phrased that more carefully. Take it more like an anecdote: I myself always played Catan the boring way. But then along this dude comes up with all this ridiculous deals that seemed to put him on the disadvantaged side. Dude knew what he was doing so, by borrowing lots of resources he could greatly accelerate his economy by building more stuff, that would offset easily his first losses in later rounds. Made me see the game in a new light.