> I'm confused. I don't see what makes most of the examples cited here "Brutalist" in any meaningful fashion.

Because these examples have nothing to do with "brutalism" in architecture. It's just another buzzword misappropriated by (web) designers. 5 years ago everything was "flat" now everything is "brutalist" including what was "flat".

Designers shouldn't pick a style because it's trendy, they should do their job as designers and actually design for their intended audience and medium.

HN is no more "brutalist" than Craiglist. Effective web design should be optimized for fast loading times, readability, easy information retrieval and responsiveness. These issues are far more challenging than trying to fit a style du jour.