Now that I'm GS, my experience so far is that yes, it's of course better than 1K is today, but I felt more special as a 1K 20-25 years ago than I do as a GS now. Some of the agents though are absolute gems - but I found a few of those as a 1K too.

Only one flight so far this year which was FRA-SFO. There were 7 GS in Polaris, and all of them had family with them, for a total of 26 GS-related passengers according to the purser. The mattress pads were "reserved" for GS and it was quite comical to see the FA's try to hide them when distributing to avoid non-GS pax asking for them. Slippers, otoh, were pro-actively handed out to the entire cabin, which is something I've never seen before trans-atlantic.

The irony I'm starting to see about GS is that if you're having to fly paid J to earn it, the only truly meaningful benefits it provides you are IRROPS handling and upgrade priority (plus award upgrades etc.) for your family and friends using your miles and plus points. Not diminishing those at all, but it's hard to rationalize actively seeing out GS on UA for that if it would cause you to spend extra $.