alt Hacker NewsBut what is the point of the background then? I mean, it seems like we're admitting that the design doesn't matter, then why keep up the ruse? Let's drop design, and keep just plain textual information. There is no substance to it, it's just performative, a simulacrum of design.
I would think to catch people's eye so they look in the first place, sort of similar to an ad. Which is also why we see AI slop work well in ads. And before AI slop, we had corpo slop. Just bright colors and wacky animated characters who all fit that archetype where their limbs are too big. So I do think the design takes a back seat, at least for the common case. Of course there are exceptions, and those exceptions are exceptional, but for most purposes slop works fine.