Oh yeah, i think every one did - but they certainly werent used in "semantically correct containers".
Even HN, this very website, still uses spacer gifs. Sadly.
Spacer GIFs which are resized for narrow screens (300-750px) using CSS depending on the tag's width attribute. That's not a technique I've seen before:
I don't understand why anyone would consider this sad.
Because it's not really reliable and breaks in many situations. reddits old nested divs work much better in contrast, and have a layout that matches the semantic situation better.