look can you fill the gen z guy in on this grand story hating bards as I smell a history.
Well, as is well-known and cannot be reasonably disputed, the class started in error. Do you know how old mapmakers would put fake towns in their atlases to make sure that no one was copying them? And Van Halen would put in the "M&M" rider into their contracts to make sure that venues read the entire contract?
Well, Gygax did the same thing. He realized that he needed editing on occasion. So he deliberately put in a "joke class," the Bard, in the appendix. I mean, c'mon! You know it's a joke! It doesn't follow any of the rules of any other class. It doesn't make any sense within the rules (half-elves can be bards, but they can't dual class ... so .... ). He put it in there to make sure that other people were paying attention.
But then it got published. Ugh. That's right ... worse than any Mountebank, we have the Bard. A class that quite literally is an anagram for "drab." And Brad, because Brad? Yeah, that guy always wants to play Bards, because of course he does. "Yeah, Brad, we get it. Freddie Mercury, the really fast Bard. Yes, you are so clever Brad. No one before has thought of that."
And so it goes. Poo-tee-weet. What is a Bard, anyway, other than a grab-bag of abilities, designed to annoy other players? "Look, my cantrip is insulting people! Time to dust off the yo mama jokes."
Of course you will find Bard defenders; the person who avows, "No, really, my Bard is cool! He's the Sally Field of Bards, you'll like him, you'll really really like him!"
Don't believe that for a second.
Bards represent that dark, venal and incurably violent side of D&D players that almost every other TTRPG has learned to fear and despise. Bards are D&D's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. The Bard speaks for the werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string-warts on nights when the moon comes too close.
Other than that?