I think a large part of that was that the majority of the shuttles service was spent in a pre-internet world. We literally didn't know the shuttles weaknesses until there were big incidents like Challenger and Columbia.
I was a kid in 86'. And (like a lot of others I'll bet) I was absolutely in awe of the shuttle. I was enamoured thanks to movies like SpaceCamp, etc...
Nowadays, with starliner, every failure in testing, every flaw, every glitch, is presented on a thousand tech blogs.