It can happen by accident. I assembled a system for my son (for "gaming"), and noticed that the window movement on his monitor was significantly smoother than on the cheaper monitors I'm accustomed to. It was just...nice. So I upgraded the monitor on my desktop too.

I cannot distinguish between 120Hz and 144Hz.

I avoid any-higher refresh rates, by your own reasoning =P

I still maintain an entire fleet of 30Hz equipment, but my main two machines are each 144Hz (sharing one screen $$). The $600 Mac Mini handles this easily. Obviously the other's nVidia GPU is a different $tory$$$$ == PoE@144Hz so_pretty

My favorite digital reading method, conversely, is probably less than 1Hz (eInk)? But even hundred of pages of text I'll always prefer printouts.