Thanks for the response! And I agree, it's like some sites just don't have content. I have nothing against videos, images, CSS, and JavaScript (hey, I am professionally a frontend developer :)) but often it is just not motivated.
In a way, I think this trend is downgrading to people if you can say that in English. Most people are not stupid, they see through it - I think, or I hope. It would be ok (even extremely motivated) with spectacular imagery and so on if it for instance was a Design site, but quite a few sites where there is no such link seems to think that visitors can't 'see' that they have nonsense Stock-images instead of real content.
Nicely put btw: 'sensory overload'.