I opened with "Einstein" because you said, "that isn't how story fucking works" so I am returning the toxic behavior right back at ya Mr. Hypocrite.
Filler doesn't just apply to the anime dude, it can also apply to the manga. Stalling for 10 chapters by having Luffy running up the stairs so that Oda can reach his 1000 chapter is filler. Manga filler does exist dude and Oda is by far the king of it.
Also, Oda said that because it is clearly a sales pitch dude, stop trying to reword it into something it isn't. Oda is trying to get as many people to buy his manga as possible. It has nothing to do with anything other than him and his team to get as much sales as possible.
If I knew One Piece was going to end up like this where Oda was milking his story and baiting his readers which is one of the most disrespectful things a writer can do and adding 90% filler to every post time skip arc I wouldn't have wasted 12 years reading this crap manga. One Piece is a generic low level, lazy written manga that uses the same cut and paste formula every arc because Oda knows he maxed out the story 500 chapters ago. Yonko saga was 400 chapters of filler.
Readers sat through 150 chapters so that they can see this?
A fucking half panel of the central figure of Wano since Punk Hazard, like wtf is this crap? Dude wasted our time with the Scabbards and Wano.