I've done a tiny bit of pair programming, though probably as much as three hours.

I didn't find it particularly effective either, but it was never a thing you had to do ever in any organization.

Even when "XP" was big, pair programming wasn't big (in my experience) because management felt that it was expensive to have two people working on one thing.

How sitting next to another programmer for three hours left you traumatized is a bit hard to understand. And I have been in some seriously traumatic experiences.

Anyway, the fad for pair programming was just that. No one does it anymore.