It acknowledges that the problem space is difficult. Making something truly delightful is no small task — and it responds by giving up. The site is a (forceful) shrug.
There is absolutely the side of the internet you're talking about, regarding making things pretty, but it's secondary in my opinion.
Youtube used to let you scroll through the list of related videos and read comments while keeping the video you were watching anchored. That's a regression in terms of usability and thus a regression in terms of "art and style".
And bad art and bad style can prevent the spread of information. Remember Hippocrates: first do no harm.
>Websites aren't broken by default, they are functional, high-performing, and accessible. You break them.
Meta: is this for the town in Spain or the street in Toronto?
Sometimes nothing is the best thing to do, especially given all the examples that people have decided to do 'something' and it ends up much more than this site.
This is all well and good but it should come after being able to load a page quickly that's accessible over a slow connection and isn't wasteful of metered connections.
"I'm not actually saying your shitty site should look like this. What I'm saying is that all the problems we have with websites are ones we create ourselves. Websites aren't broken by default, they are functional, high-performing, and accessible."
I.e. the site is explicitly saying it's not trying to argue every site should actually taste like chicken and broccoli, rather it shouldn't lose so many of the good things a chicken and broccoli site already accomplishes out of the box in being different.
I've never really liked the delivery of that message but at the end of the day it's a good message and can't be boiled down to "make your site bland".