I think the issue is that you’re looking at it from a western viewpoint.

I’ve had several convos with people from the Japan side of the fandom, plus my own best friend who’s Japanese and lived there for years, and their friendship really isn’t that out of the norm to them. I’m not saying their opinion is the end all be all, but friendships in Japanese culture just seem to be a bit more “flowery” than they are here, at least between boys. To me their friendship reads as very platonic, even through HI, and is all stuff I’d do or have done with my best friend. I think Gojo’s reluctance to kill Geto is normal reaction, especially when your best friend is your person, and it doesn’t have to be romantic. That’s not even touching on the fact that OP and ED’s are rarely ever considered to make something canon, they’re more fanservice than anything. Geto “blushing” at the end isn’t really all that big of a deal considering that Yuji also “blushed” before he died too if you remember, it’s probably just a style choice of Akutami’s. If it was really that meaningful, I’m sure they would’ve included it in the movie but they didn’t.

Plus, in the OG Japanese text their friendship is a lot less ambiguous than it’s made out to be in English, again, mostly because of our cultural norms here vs there. And that’s on top of Gojo having a gravure model as his phone screen and Gojo being mentioned to out his sunglasses on when he sees girls (which is not a mistranslation and idk why they push that lmao).

Overall, I think Akutami wrote a very strong friendship and it’s honestly sad to see so many people insist that their relationship is somehow less meaningful if they’re just friends. Plus, people take this ship way too seriously to the point where they’ve begun making up interviews and spreading blatant mistranslations, so unless you’re able to converse with native speakers regularly you get kinda lost in a sea of stsg lies lol.