I mean 'dry' rather than esoteric
Let's face it .. reading about physics doesn't have the same buzz as reading a good book or listening to good music .. it's more a 'knowledge thing', so pretty cerebral. But every now & again breakthroughs occur which fascinate everyone, like the invention & use of the telescope. GW detection would be as major, directly extending our sense of hearing, as telescopes have done with vision. It would be more 'intimate' to us than say, radio telescopes which work outside the range of our senses.
It really is amazing that the GR equations predict that GWs from massive events (like inspiralling binaries) will have frequencies bang in the middle of our hearing range ..