Well, this is their personal project. You're welcome to make your own, or you can remove the branding if you want: it's open licensed. Or if you're not a coder, they even offer to remove the branding if you support the project

I don't get the impression that it's meant to be annoying, but a personal preference. I can't know that, though whitelabeling is a common thing people pay for without the original brand having made their logo extra ugly

While subjecting the entire Internet to industrial-scale abuse by inconsiderate and poorly written crawlers for the sake of building an overhyped "whatever" is of course perfectly acceptable.

Well, to be fair, that's not our doing so not really an argument for why one should accept something one apparently dislikes (I myself find the character funny and it brings a fun moment when it flashes by, but I can understand/accept that others see it differently of course)

Yes, an argument for why one should accept something one apparently dislikes usually only works when it's from authority.