I remember the fad. I was around for the Extreme Programming era. But, I've never worked anywhere that pair programming was the norm, nor have I known any developers that wanted to pair program, in the general case.
My personal experience is, of course, not representative of an entire industry, but I just have a hard time imagining it being a common thing. I like working with other people and helping juniors sort out their problems, but I'd quit my job if I had to take turns writing code while someone else watched and just sitting and watching someone else writing code. Both of those things seem horrible, to me.
I happened to "pair program" for the first time in years today! My coworker asked me to come over and help him with a problem.
'course we only did it for like 5 min to get him over the hump.
I think that's the only use case. It sucks having someone hover over you otherwise.
I love pairing. It always results it better outcomes than not pairing and I've been saddened by the slow decay of the term to now refer to like "talk to me a bit until I'm unstuck" instead of "both work together and get it done"