It's not about pop culture or just random probability measurements, It's really the fact that life made it here, so why can't it elsewhere? 3-4+ billion years of life, how can Earth be the only example? Because in spite of the universe being deadly and destructive as you say, life exists anyway. So either life here got improbably lucky where everything else was simply killed, or the universe may just be a little more conducive to life than you think.

But to be honest, basing the assumption on what we know so far about exoplanets isn't the greatest evidence for or against extraterrestial life. We've only been searching for planets over a few short decades, our instruments have only very recently become sensitive enough to analyze the atmospheres of Earth sized planets, and even with JWST online, it may be years more before they're advanced enough to confirm life, not just find candidates. We simply don't have enough data yet.