Your assessment is correct, 100%, so please know the following is written through the lens of my agreeing with you completely. However, I do have a theory: This design (for lack of a better word) targets an endangered breed of gen X/early millennial nerds who find the appeal in the (purposefully?) bad aesthetic. It's a weird sort of perverse pride in rejecting design trends - or just common sense design in general - and having to do the work to use something that's barely usable at all. Intentionally or not, it's functioned almost as a deterrent, a set of 'design features' (there's that lack of a better word again) meant to attract a particular breed of nerds while discouraging everyone else from ever engaging with it. I fell for it I won't lie, to the point where even though I loathe how anti-user this design is, it's become sort of endearing, reminiscent of a time when the internet was simpler and I was witnessing the dawn of a growing age of access to information. I hate it, but I'll still miss it once it's finally replaced by something more sensible.