> Webdevs need to get over themselves, and the wider world needs to stop letting them get by with (or encouraging) this kind of narcissism.
What a presumptuous statement! Authoritarian, even. It's one thing for someone else's website, such as HN, Reddit, Wikipedia, etc., to impose a homogeneous form on posts submitted by guests on the site. It's quite another thing to assert that "the wider world" should "stop letting [independent webdevs]" deviate from a similar standard of homogeneity.
If you don't like the appearance of someone else's webpage, maybe just don't go to that webpage?
Ironic take for a comment that exists only as a consequence of what started out as someone complaining about how boring other people's websites look; there's no way out of this—either you agree with the ability to criticize, in which case mine is fair, or you disagree, in which case it's not but then yours isn't either and neither you nor anyone else should bother yourselves or others about the sameness of anyone's websites (instead, focus on not going to the ones that bother you so much in their sameness).
(And choosing to read my comment as an "authoritarian" imposition on "independent webdevs"—not actually stated anywhere? How presumptuous.)
I'm going to put a tiled JPEG of an artist's rendition of the night sky in the background of my blog, to assert my liberties and affirm my right to be silly and have fun
What a presumptuous statement! Authoritarian, even. It's one thing for someone else's website, such as HN, Reddit, Wikipedia, etc., to impose a homogeneous form on posts submitted by guests on the site. It's quite another thing to assert that "the wider world" should "stop letting [independent webdevs]" deviate from a similar standard of homogeneity.
If you don't like the appearance of someone else's webpage, maybe just don't go to that webpage?