Arch will immediately force the user to go through a lot of hoops, learn a million terminal commands

I don’t know if it was ever true, but it’s definitely not true now. You don’t need to know more scary terrifying terminal commands than you need on any other distribs. And if you need to install any software, you will on average have to use less scary terminal commands on Arch than on, for example, Ubuntu that is usually recommended to a newbie. Most of the software you will ever need is in (from user’s perspective) one place. You don’t need to connect any additional repositories and don’t need to install separate versions of libraries and stuff (and that’s done with horror inducing terminal, might I remind you). And don’t even get me started on snap and all the headache it brings.
If you’re using your computer as a glorified browser, you don’t care about rolling releases. If you use various software, rolling release is better for compatibility.
I am speaking from lots of experience helping various levels of newbies get into Linux. As much as you might think Ubuntu is “more intuitive” whatever the fuck that might mean, I can assure you, it’s not, it’s very much the opposite of that.

Installing it from scratch manually? Maybe no, not for an inexperienced user who’s goal isn’t to learn Linux.
But I would argue Arch itself is great for a casual user to have. All the software in one place, installed with the same command, and you only install what you want, so no fiddling with bullshit you didn’t ask for.

I really don’t like how “consumer-friendly” means “GUI that resembles Windows” in the minds of so many people.