About to say the same thing! I'm sure there are some people who use a mechnical keyboard to "show off", but for me (and I assume the vast majority) the noise you endure is pollution while I enjoy the tactile & audio dopamine hit.
I have these, for an office. Yes they are silent if you slowly push and release a key, but thumping away at 50-60 wpm still makes a huge amount of noise, even with o-rings installed (although a lot quieter than blue switches which I used to have).
I have topre switches, so a bit different experience, but a friend of mine had "shown off" that indeed, you can type silently on them. It's the art of not bottoming out which is something like 90% of the noise.
There are some silent, tactile switches, but I think they're a bit more obscure.
I made my ergonomic, split keyboards from a kit[1], and chose Aliaz Silent switches [2]. It's around the same noisiness as everyone else's keyboard (Apple, cheap Dell one etc).
(There are almost certainly other options — the choice was a bit overwhelming when I decided to buy a DIY keyboard — but I'm not in the hobby of collecting many different keyboards. Various Reddit groups can advise.)
Linear switches are basically already silent compared to tactile or clicky switches. If Cherry starts making quiet blues or clears I'll start getting excited.
Honestly the biggest source of noise for basically all mechanical keys except buckling spring or cherry-blue style keys is the noise of the keycap or key stem hitting the bottom and subsequently the top of travel. Half of that is fixable with o-rings but that still leaves the noise at the top of travel which doesn't currently have any solutions as far as I know.
They're no louder than a regular membrane keyboard, and much quieter than just using O-rings.