Chess is a game that is fun and it is a game with vast information and knowledge to learn from.
Saying that chess is becoming dead, would be ridicoulous at least for the time being. However the OP does say somthing that catches my attention and now thinking about it, the Era of Engines is here, and due to this it makes chess much less fun. It makes chess more about preparation instead of intuition. It makes chess seem like whoever has the most opening knowledge quite practically win, it makes chess seem like something more mechanical and less human in nature.
I know this may sound odd, but it seems like engines are taking over the game, as think about it. Most Super GM's even all of them have significant preperation, but think about what happened before engines, such lines were not prepared and such moves were not even thought of, chess was just a gave or pure intuition and superior play that lead one person to win due to another person's mistakes. It was game that allowed people on top level play to duke it out from their understanding and pure playstlyes, no engine was here before the early 2000's so it makes it the more interesting how games developed at that time. However now 70% of all games in top tier play is draws and engines are definitley a contributing factor to this.
Now are engines bad because of this? No, of course not, they help people with their games, they are nice to watch play other engines and they bring a new course of action. However I will say we are coming to the point in which chess has less fun naturally and is becoming more of a mechanical game on the top tier level of super GM's and normal GM's and it is making imbalances(no pun intended) due to this.
It is a problem in mine eyesight and I wish engines were not such a priority in the lives of people and more of natural play, however it is what it is, and from what it is, there is no stopping engines being in the lives of chess players, and that's fine. But still the shift says that people don't like engines in top play and is ruining the game, the shift says that there are 70% of draws, the shift say that there will be more and more preperation needed in the game of chess rather than natural play based on style and intuition.
This is what is happening in the world of chess due to it and it is a relationship that is making more people come but also making others leave the game because it is not quite the same, and can we blame them?
The only thing we can do is play the game and for the top contendors that play, they will play with the engines, but as for popularity currently it is well established, however in the future I would not be suprised if there is a major decline towards chess because of what is soon to come of heavy engine use and the lack of natural play in the game.
For more than a century now it has been possible for machines to move faster than humans. However, this has no impact on the vitality of human competition. We still have the Olympics. We still celebrate 'the fastest man on earth' (typically the 100m race winner).
Machines can also lift more weight than the strongest humans. But we still have human weight-lifting contests. Nobody says that weight lifting is dead.
I just don't get why some people think that the fact that machines can play better chess than humans should have any impact on the vitality of human competition in chess.
Because all of those examples are physical. Faster, stronger, quicker, more versatile machines dont make sports dead or less enjoyable. Like you said we still have the olympics and weight lifting. But in the case of chess, it's not physical. It's mental. So machines that perform better than humans when it comes to thinking make the activity less enjoyable.
In almost all examples machines that are better than humans in physical ability dont really impact the enjoyment of those physical activities. But when a machine is better at thinking (like math or chess or computing) that competition becomes a lot less popular.
Chess will never die. But it will never have the competition popularity it once had because now people are not as impressed as they once were.
Of course, you are entitled to your opinion. But I just don't agree with it.
It's true the examples I gave were about physical prowess. But I don't see why it should be different if a machine is better at something mentally rather than physically. You say that 'humans in physical ability don't really impact the enjoyment of those physical activities. But when a machine is better at thinking (like math or chess or computing) that competition becomes a lot less popular.' - but stating that does not make it true. I cannot see why we should not enjoy playing chess with each other and competing to be the best in the world just because machines can do it better. I honestly just cannot see your argument. Why should be enjoy playing chess less if machines can play better than us? I just don't get it. Though I understand it is your belief.
And although I gave physical examples, I could have noted that there has been in decline in, for example, mathematical competitions over the last four of five decades despite the obvious fact that computers can do this better. We still have international Bridge tournaments. We still host coding competitions.
In any event, before we seek reasons for why chess is becoming less popular we should ask whether chess is becoming less popular. I am not convinced that it is. A survey in 2012 estimated that > 600 million people play chess regularly in the world
The USCF had 1000 members in the 1940s, growing slowly but steadily. Bobby Fischer transfixed the American public in particular of course. Membership boomed to about 60,000 in the mid 70s. But what has happened since? How many people are members of USCF today (2020)? The answer is over 90,000. And a great many of these are children where there has been a particular spike in interest recently.
In other words, chess is growing in popularity in the USA not becoming less popular. So there is no reason to invent reasons (be it the dominance of computers or the growth of internet e-sports) to explain its decline. I have no doubt that an American World Chess Champion would generate huge interest in USA.
What about the rest of the word? Until a few decades ago hardly anyone played chess in China. Today there are an estimated 3 million people who play chess in China with > 300,000 being members of the Chinese ChesS federation
If anything chess is growing in popularity.