This is hilariously inaccurate. There’s a whole dissertation on what REST is and it’s easily graspable, if you care to read it. REST is about hypermedia, if there is not hypermedia, it is not REST.
It must be said that confidence with which you present your inaccurate assertions is only going to make others as confused as you are.
If you found it hilarious, well, that was the point: the words in the acronym are very un-denotative, so it encourages deconstruction to mean whatever the reader wants it to mean.
If I truly want people to understand what I'm talking about, rather than just make something popular, I don't give them evocative, fluffy slogans and then direct them to a dissertation to find out what the fluff really means. I use carefully chosen, denotative words in my slogan.
HATEOAS is a good example of prizing clarity over vague evocativeness. It's all about hypermedia, so hypermedia is in the acronym.
If I don't do this, I can't be too upset at what predictably ensues, as people take my cool-sounding slogans and repurpose them to legitimize their own ideas.
It must be said that confidence with which you present your inaccurate assertions is only going to make others as confused as you are.