First off...hey Tarn! hahah.
Anyway, I think you just noticed that there are so many monks because you`re leveling monk as well. There are probably so many monks looking for a party at a time because of what someone said about distoriton SCs and all that. (But now that you`re 60, that may all change with the invites, since you can make distortion now, too.) It may be true that a lot of monks nowadays are just "bandwagoners"... You may think that there is an over abundance of monks now because you`re leveling it, and you see them as competition perhaps.
I, for one, started about a year ago, when my boyfriend got me to play. Before I bought the game, I did a little research as to what the game was like and what jobs and races F11 offered. I have always been a DD at heart...more specifically, hand-to-hand. Something about getting up close and personal to a mob and punching it was satisfying. I was an Assassin on DiablosIIExpansion a loooong time ago, and it was basically like a MNK/NIN job combo. I saw that monk was the job most fitting for me, and I researched the best race for it. I saw countless threads about Mithras & Elvaans...but I never liked how Mithras looked... Plus Elvaans seemed to have the better base stats needed for a monk. So that got me to where I am now. Only later on in the game did I realize that tarutarus had the best Asuran Fists animation...A year has passed and I can say for sure that this job is one of the best DD jobs. I must say, I am proud to be a monk.
there is so much more to monk than just DDing, that`s for sure. All the job abilities and traits are really great. But the one thing that makes me really happy to be a monk is that feeling I got when I finished the brown belt quest. I`m sure I`ll feel a lot more accomplished when I finally get a black belt, but who knows when that will be... But just getting the brown belt is an accomplishment in itself, since plenty of people just buy it and don`t bother with the quest.
Sorry for the long post and if I made any typos or anything... I`m in Japan right now at an internet cafe on a Japanese keyboard... it's really different, I must say. (And no... no JP button on this one, because there is no FF11 on this computer)