Turns out the reply in my thread telling me the best way to combat not caring about Linux is to care about Linux was absolutely correct.
I picked up a laptop, installed Linux Mint Cinnamon, and I'm already obsessed. I haven't had this much fun with a PC in a long time and it's just a cheapo Dell Inspiron 3520.
These days, it's a little bit janky while the new dev team tries to modernize it, but try out Ubuntu Unity on a live USB or something.
It's pretty and it's fun to use. Different, but not alien. I wouldn't install it as a daily driver yet, but if you are having fun trying out Linux stuff, I'd say to give that desktop interface a try.