It's important to understand that while people might think that the pop-ups are required by the law, this is not true and most pop-ups today have no legal effect regardless of what you click. The GDPR requires express consent. If the pop-up uses a dark pattern to make "refusing consent" difficult, then clicking on whatever it takes to make the pop-up go away isn't consent.
And just setting a cookie doesn't necessarily need consent either, if it's used directly to provide the service (eg. a cookie to track your login session or your shopping basket).
A change requires the authorities to actually start enforcing this. https://noyb.eu is campaigning for this.
I wish this "wilful consent" was more often challenged in court as it has become ubiquitous in todays IT landscape. The most offending example outside of the web is WhatsApp in the EU: They show me a "We need your consent for our new privacy policy" banner every day, with only two options: Accept, and the "x" in the corner, which basically is a "nag me again tomorrow" button. There is no "deny" option. I would seriously think that any nudging/nagging dialogs like this should not be considered wilful consent.
And just setting a cookie doesn't necessarily need consent either, if it's used directly to provide the service (eg. a cookie to track your login session or your shopping basket).
A change requires the authorities to actually start enforcing this. https://noyb.eu is campaigning for this.