And in this case, their being gifs or images add nothing of value to the article. They're just quotes superimposed over faces with blinking text. Aesthetics over functionality.

This whole article is something you would normally see on Tumblr. Also, I can't read text on GIFs, it's very unpleasant and makes me feel dizzy.

ie, Culture.

Not to mention the animations - jittery text on a grainy image - adds absolutely 0 useful information, does it at the expense of a huge download and a headache.

Also they give me a headache so bonus points for that.

With sufficient advances in NLP & ML, i dream that one day you will be replaced by a bot able to generate snarky comments about slow/mobile-unfriendly/ad-riddled webpages automatically.

its not like those gifs add anything of value which a still frame couldnt.

Or better yet, Medium could place a warning that the user has uploaded files with a hefty file-size and how it could cause performance or data issues for their readers.

What a bot would be better for is people complaining about people complaining. That'd knock out a good 50% of all HN comments.

Speaking of culture, this comment reminds me of how other communities see HN. We seem to be unaware of our own culture while outsiders can see it quite well.

- "Ad hominem"

- Causation/correlation

- Complaining about ads

- Complaining about font color and size

- Complaining

- "This." (We pinched the laziest one-liner Reddit has to offer)

- Anything regarding logical fallacies

Add:

- confirmation bias

- strawman

- bubble or not

- why disable mobile zoom?

touche :p