I'm sure I'm sitting on the wrong side of countless user studies that say to the contrary, but when an exception or problem occurs, I really dislike the feeling of helplessness. Something isn't working the way it is supposed to, and often times I can only rely on myself to fix it; this is particularly relevant for companies with non-existent support services, like Google, where you're basically at the mercy of what other more adventurous and capable users are able to fix on their own. To me, tossing up a "funny" error message when there is no support channel is incredibly frustrating, because not only is there no one I can ask for assistance, I can't even do research myself because I have nothing to go on except for a caricature of the WebDevs or a Frowny-Face and the steps leading up to the problem.
Again, I'm sure I'm on the wrong side of countless studies here, but I can't figure out how this is better than at least some sort of error message.
This is completely off topic, but I was a UX study participant last year, it was an interesting experience. They told me to do as I usually do when surfing the web, and to verbalize my thought process.
I opened the website, and a huge nonmodal advertisement to win some $15 piece of garbage pops up. On pure instinct I click ctrl-w to close the tab, and state "what an obnoxious advertisement, I am boycotting this site".
It went downhill from there.
I also dislike the first person error messages. "We are sending ...", "Let me fix this" when you are clearly 'talking' to a computer.