Covid was something that I was also thinking of.

What I'd add is that 'anaerobic' and 'carbonic maceration' are fairly spectacularly uninformative terms. Basically the only thing that you can be sure of is that they probably involved some attempt to prevent air or oxygen from getting to the coffee at some stage. But how, and for how long, varies widely. The coffee cherries might have been put in a stainless steel tank and flushed with carbon dioxide under temperature controlled conditions for just a few hours, or they might have been chucked in a garbage bag that was knotted closed and left in the sun for a few weeks. Some of these coffees taste almost, or actually, indistinguishable from washed coffees or naturals.

If particular mention is being made of the coffees being anaerobic, it's likely that the processing probably had long fruit contact. Personally, I hate most of these coffees. They are usually described as having all manner of fresh fruit flavours, but I usually find that, at best, they taste like a rotten version of that fruit, and they often have flavours that others have mentioned - but that don't get mentioned in taste descriptions - like soy sauce, miso, sharpie and jackfruit.

Underlying all of this, I think that the coffees I've mentioned above are basically the polar opposites of clean washed coffees when it comes to extraction and peoples' point of view. People that love these coffees often hate washed coffees, finding them bland and acidic. What I wonder is if this comes down to extraction. Acidic, light roast, washed coffees really need to be extracted hard to get the aroma out of them and if you don't do that, then they can be bland and acidic. By contrast, the very strongly flavoured anaerobics often smell strongly of what you taste even in the green coffee before they are roasted. Wave water anywhere near them and you're sure to get a hit of their distinctive flavours. They have the opposite problem from washed coffees; you extract them too hard and you bring out all of the worst characteristics. So what I'm wondering is if, at least in part, peoples' preferences come down to the gear that they have and their extraction methods. If you have a grinder that struggles to hit, say, 16% extraction or you insist on brewing filter with a very high dose and low yield to get a very high TDS cup, then you may be more likely to like these intense anaerobics. Conversely, if you have dialled in your light roast washed coffees that require a ridiculous extraction yield to not taste like lemon juice, they may pull out all that you hate the most from anaerobic coffees. So if you have any anaerobic coffees around that you find questionable, maybe make some adjustment to dramatically lower the extraction yield and see if you like them any better - eg. make your grind way coarser and/or run way less water through a filter brew (and perhaps add some bypass if necessary to get the TDS you want).