The intent of the parts of GDPR which mention cookies (or, at least, what I assume the intent was) was to essentially "upgrade" the banner from a simple and largely useless notification (i.e "By using this site you agree to our use of cookies") to one of informed consent (i.e "Please click accept or deny the use of cookies to continue using this site").

Interestingly, as far as I am aware, no site or company has ever been taken to court or even fined for not using a cookie banner, despite some websites publically declaring they won't use it[0].

0: https://nocookielaw.com/

So if you hate to put cookie banners onto a site, just stick with storing only strictly necessary cookies without data that identifies your users and you are fine.

The problem is, many people don’t even know what cookies their own site stores with their users and they store a ton of tracking cookies on their user’s devices.

[0] https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/abp/

I can see why that prevents a browser from auto-accepting all cookies, but how in the world does this logic apply to me if I want to deny consent to 100% of the websites to use cookies?

Set the default on the browser to deny all consent, and show the cookie notification somewhere unobtrusive, the same way it was done for notifications.