AOSP has effectively been dead for a long time. You need Google Play services for almost everything now and more and more creeps into the proprietary portion.
No you don't. Writing an app to use google services is a choice. There's MicroG for silly apps that require google services, and there's also life without using silly apps that require google services.
Please note how you dismiss apps requiring Google Play services as "silly," when most people who use those services use them as part of the hardware root of trust programs for work apps, or other device attestation for banking apps. Putting demeaning adjectives in front of the things you're arguing against isn't a compelling argument, I think you'll find, and "life without" banking and work apps leads to a lower quality of life for a lot of people.
