The DVD screensaver was perfect: unobtrusive and did what it was supposed to do: prevent your CRT screen from burning-in an image. On top of that, it gave you something to look forward to when it would perfectly hit a corner (which some people thought was a myth; sadly the GIF version does not).
Now, any screen in your home is fair game for intrusive ads. Why make something simple, elegant, functional, and unobtrusive when that otherwise idle (or even in-use!) screen can be crammed with ads.
You probably already know this but it’s not just for the environment. Screensavers were almost exclusively used to protect your screen from burn in. During the switch from Plasma to LCD this became (almost completely) obsolete. Screens became less prone to burn in, video protocols (HDMI, DP) got support for turn off signals, and detection of content being played got better, thus making screensavers obsolete as well. So I wouldn’t call computers stupid.
Well now there’s oled so burn in is very much a thing and screensavers are back on TVs at least, except they suck now.
And I would definitely call modern computers stupid but it’s not the computers fault, tbf. A computer is just a thing. It’s the fault of greed mainly. Computers are stupid because they don’t have charming features like screensavers anymore. That’s too expensive. Usability, repairability, user control, etc is sacrificed consistently to shove in advertising and opportunities for upselling. Whenever this isn’t the case it’s almost always a temporary moment before venture capital purchases the company that makes the hardware/software and then they will 100% do that