I don't mind you saying this - I think my style is very off-putting to some. The same things that disenchant you about the style are what make others love it. I try to be entertaining and informative, rather than just informative, because that's what makes it enjoyable for me. But like all entertainment, it's stylized, so it will put some people off. Hopefully you found the content valuable, at least!
For me, its not so much the presence of animated gifs as much as I wanted to be able to scroll one off of the screen while I focused on the words. For me, the top 30% of the page had something moving no matter where I scrolled. I can appreciate style and levity but for me the busy screen was enough to drive me away. Looks my Reader mode would have blocked all of the images and should have just gone with that ;)
That's great feedback, I will avoid .gifs in my future blog posts. I can see how that would be distracting and an accessibility issue.
Maybe just space them out more.
I appreciated the gifs, personally. Added some humor to the article. Maybe there's a way to have them not autoplay or something.
Please, think about us living in poor countries with expensive and slow internet connections.
Yeah, I have decided I'm just too old for this style. Something wants to be serious, but then it tries to be cute by adding all of the GIFs that do nothing to enhance. I'm all for adding media in whatever format that adds to the understanding of the material. These kinds of garnishes are no better than the animated backgrounds of MySpace and Web1.0 days. Now, get off my lawn!!!