Btw I remember browsing the web with early versions of Netscape on X console of an i386sx server which at the same time had dozens of irc-and-whatever-doing users. The browsing experience was smoother than now.
Of course there were no flash, js and other pile of technologies. But face the facts, most of these novelties are used today to deliver the content of questionable value in a way which will make it better memes, nothing more.
If you look at it from a distance it's quite stupid use for such advancved technologies. I still believe in an idea that computers are here to free us from a boring repetitive work - to compute things for us. The outcome of it would be that average user spent less time by the computers, enjoying what he likes in a life instead. But today's situation is that the software industry is making users sitting more by the computers, because this industry is all about trading the information, memes and advertisements, luring the users into false comfort zones like social networks, ad target groups via portals and stuff like that.
It's just stupid. Flash loaders are just part of this counter-productive culture. Usually the more CPU they eat the less interesting the content showed afterwards is. It's like that because CPU-eating intro shows something about the state of mind of people who created it (or hired the creators) and most likely such people will not have anything interesting to show as a real content.
