Sorry but those animated gifs distracted me from reading. Normally I will scroll things like that off the page but when they come so close to each other all I see is the movement.
Personally, I found them to be topical and slightly more engaging than text. They appear at the top of each section, so I thought of them as helpful summaries of each section as well as comic relief. I felt like they encouraged me to finish the next section instead of leaving the page early.
I just read the titles and looked at the gifs, didn't bother with the text :)
Me too, I had to actually cover the moving memes with my hand to be able to read the text.