Can you elaborate on how a DND show run by veterans of the voice acting industry managed to kill an entire hobby, one which DND does not represent the whole of? Genuinely curious, not a slight
So how many hours of free time do you have, because this is an issue going back years, perhaps a decade and some change, but I'll try to condense as much as possible.
If we're talking in terms of popularity, you can easily find a game if you put in the effort, especially with various online tools and servers for any ruleset or campaign you could think of. Go one step further, host the games yourself, curate your players, and they will eventually come.
But you'll have to run the risk of playing with fans of Critical Role and its aftereffects on the hobby, in that if the game isn't like what Critical Role does, it's "wrong".
Coinciding with this, WOTC has been changing the game to accommodate this surge in popularity - cue the millions of articles about how "Orcs are actually black people and dwarves are jews (no, we're not racist for thinking this, YOU'RE the racists)". Now every race is equal with no unique racial bonuses - wait, no, can't use the word "race" anymore, that's problematic - and the game continues to be dumbed down for the common denominator, so problem solved, right? Not good enough. There needs to be more actual real-world race and LGBT representation in every game, everyone against this are heckin' bigots. The spiral continues until this day, with these fans bleeding into other TTRPG efforts as well.
Back to Critical Role, years into their popularity they would have to apologize for not having enough queer and BIPOC players in their games, and now their earlier content is ALSO heckin' problematic. Celebrations of the first black DM in Critical Role, celebrations of "the message", their animated series isn't good enough for those standards, so on and so forth. Even with all the changes they make, they probably won't be as popular as they used to be, and the damage has already been done on the hobby by those who got into it because of them.
Dungeons and Dragons - and TTRPGs as a whole - have never been more successful, after removing everything that made the nerds of old fall in love with it.
How is it dead when it's completely possible to just... use/adapt older/better rulesets yourself? I don't know about you but D&D isn't something I just play with randoms who jumped in because of internet has-beens. My buddy's wife constantly walking in and making fun of his barbarian voice is infinitely more threatening to a game night than 5E ever was.
I agree - you can always play the old/better/homebrew rulesets with whomever you want, in fact that's the ideal way to play the game.
This won't stop the new product of D&D and similar major tabletop games from catering to the Critical Role audience and capitulating to the whims of tourists, which is what I was referring to in the hyperbole. Preserve the old ways as much as you can, and if the new content continues down this path without course correction, don't give it the time of day - instead give your time and money towards the creators that actually deliver.