What sounds fake with sequenced MIDI tracks is usually the sampled beats repeating over and over....not the perfect timming....IMO.
Personally...I can't take sloppy playing that's sometimes disguised as "human feel".
If everyone *could* play perfectly...they would.

It's about hitting the beat where the beat is...not a few milliseconds before the beat or after the beat, but ON the beat.
That's not the same as an entire band slowing down/speeding up for effect on some sections of a song..etc....that's a different thing.
And yeah...there are those situations where you play ever so slightly ahead or behind the beat...but you would do that consistently for every beat. No one plays consistently for every beat...but you can get close enough where it my not always be audible....but boy do I hate when there's those random, occasional early/late snare hits or guitar strums.
That's not groove.
It's most noticeable when you multi-track overdubs. No matter how tight of a player you are...when you RW and record track by track...you will NEVER play each track with the exact timing as any other track.
In a live setting, you go with the flow, the whole band is playing, at best you find as tight a groove as you can and you roll with it hopefully through the whole song. In the studio with multi-tracked overdubs you edit where you need to.
Ain't no shame in it....not sure why everyone gets all worked about it. You can practice 'till your fingers bleed...and still, play the same part several times, on several tracks...and there will be timing differences between the tracks.
YMMV.....