Then don't render and show me the plain text and images ... like almost all other websites I visit without scripts enabled.
C'mon be realistic.
It's like asking every software to support Windows XP. With its native UI toolkit.
Every creator has a dream to build a beautiful app, and the majority of the users want eye candy. To balance that, you need to do a few things. Appeasing nerds is good when it's a niche site. MASTODON is positioning itself as a competitor to twitter, you walk forwards and up the game, not run backward.
No avg user will ever like to use plain text/image. UI, at least, the major demographic that uses social media doesn't want to. You want to make adoption easier, not harder.