Adding a spinner is just putting lipstick on the bloat. Progressively loading a page can at least hide the bloat from the end user. A page of text should just

Adding a spinner is just putting lipstick on the bloat. Progressively loading a page can at least hide the bloat from the end user. A page of text should just be a page of text. That's the beauty in sites like hackernews and craigslist. They are down-and-dirty, just-the-facts, we'll-get-out-of-your-way websites. You see bloat when you start adding stuff that obscures that core functionality and/or slows down/degrades the experience. Of course, the core functionality changes depending on who you are. The customer might just want to read the article, but the sales team wants to get you to see/click on ads and the marketing team wants you to signup for their newsletter. So, one person's bloat is another person's core functionality.