It seems nothing ever really changes.

In the 90s people would put totally unnecessary ActiveX and Java applets on their sites that would slow down already slow web browsers.

Then came the era of unnecessary "javascripts" downloaded from sites having 1000s of those.

Then came flash, entire websites were made in it, and they were full of bells and whistles that nobody wanted.

Now we have HTML5 and CSS3, and people are still doing stupid unnecessary stuff with it. It never changes, and it never will.

I guess creating gimmicks is just human nature.