About five to eight years ago, there was a huge push to get out of the "bootstrap" fever that everybody was using. A lot of places tried (unsuccessfully) to emulate sites like Reddit, Hacker News and other minimalist site designs, thinking they could design something similar.

The sad thing is there's a lot of modern tech they're using under the hood; which a majority of people will never see or appreciate.

It's like my buddy used to say, "I gave you the capabilities to design a beautiful Ferrari; and you gave me a Toyota Corolla instead."