Programmers tend towards the same behavior: if you've ever read through an over-engineered solution, you can tell it came from a person or team that privileged the technology over the solution. So it's a kind of technological fetish.
Same goes with visual design. "Want to see a site about reverse engineering? Well here's a giant animated triangle for you, gliding across the page like a fish. See what we did there, isn't that neat?"
I am always lost as to what kind of thought goes into creating this kind of bloated abominations to display static content.