Websites are art, the same way that any other creations are. You wouldn't giggle at the idea of a song, a magazine, or a photograph being "emotional experiences", so what makes websites any different?

Probably as soon as they started trying to sell you shit.

I's not absurd at all - it's only absurd if you're in the demo that finds it absurd. And that's quite a small demo compared to most of the population.

You can't sell most people shit unless you create an emotional response.

Hacking psychology - for good or ill - is the basis of all UI and UX. It's a completely different problem to hacking code.