It is encouraging to know that I am not the only one who does that (sometimes, on interesting sites. otherwise I just leave).

I would have definitely left normally. Just wanted to see the site.

And I know this also likely not Neil's idea of fun, and mostly the silly EU rules that are to blame but still, dialogs without a directly available "refuse all" are the worst

Yes, you are not the only one.

Consent-O-matic works fantastically to select exactly what you want.

uBlock seemed to have handled it for me.

Not on mobile..

Firefox on mobile can install ublock

On Firefox mobile with unblock, here. Experienced nothing intrusive. It works, apparently. :)

Honestly I don't really see cookie banners anymore because I have a dismiss feature built into my ad blocker.

Always afraid that auto dismiss results in auto allow-all on thus type of dialog.