It's not a joke. Just because you expanded the address space doesn't mean you need to redistribute every number across the space evenly. 1.1.1.1 should still be 1.1.1.1 in ipv6 land, encoded as 0x11110000..., and some random new device can have 2221:db8:1234::f350:2256:f3dd.
They didn't need to change everyone's pre-existing addresses just to do a protocol change, same way adding unicode support to domain names wouldn't require google.com to become ∆Íßխեղճå∂ß.çøm. They also didn't need to change the default format to the ::::: stuff.
It was at the start of the IPv6, but then disabled because companies were afraid of IPv6 compatibility with IPv4, which may be used to penetrate firewalls.
Huh, I had no idea, but I can see that happening. The bigger "nope" that comes to mind is wanting to replace NAT with every device having a public IPv6. Yes a firewall is theoretically superior to NAT, but it matters in practice how stupidly secure NAT is by default.
They didn't need to change everyone's pre-existing addresses just to do a protocol change, same way adding unicode support to domain names wouldn't require google.com to become ∆Íßխեղճå∂ß.çøm. They also didn't need to change the default format to the ::::: stuff.