Fair point. However, my girlfriend swore to me that she'll never read hacker news unless they "prettify things up". She eased up and now reads HN regularly (par

Fair point. However, my girlfriend swore to me that she'll never read hacker news unless they "prettify things up". She eased up and now reads HN regularly (partly because I talk about stuff on HN regularly) - my point is that HN with no eye-candy did almost turn away a potential user. Anecdotal. Also, one may argue that people who like eye candy is not the target crowd for HN (I disagree). Still, if your site is not HN, you might want some eye candy.