Is it just me? Why are people using them? I feel like objectively they look like fake garbage, but obviously that must be my subjective biases, because people keep using them.
Some people can recognize these shortcomings and simply don't care. They are fundamentally nihilists for whom quantity itself is the only important quality.
Either way, these hero images are a convenient cue to stop reading: nothing of value will be found below.
If you don't like such content. But I would say don't judge a book by its cover.
In a world where anyone can ask an LLM to gish-gallop a plausible facsimile of whatever argument they want in seconds, it is simply untenable to give any piece of writing you stumble upon online the benefit of the doubt; you will drown in counterfeit prose.
The faintest hint that the author of a piece is a "GenAI" enthusiast (which in this case is already clear from the title) is immediate grounds for dismissing it; "the cover" clearly communicates the quality one might expect in the book. Using slop for hero images tells me that the author doesn't respect my time.
Premise 1 : anyone can get an LLM to churn out "content" in minutes.
Premise 2 : reading "AI" slop is a poor way to spend one's time.
Premise 3 : someone who thinks those images are ok is likely to have a poorly developed capacity to differentiate between actual expertise and confident-sounding blah-blah-ing.
Conclusion : abort at the first sign that someone thinks that that vaguely confident-seeming world of half-truths and vibing is in any way acceptable.
Your argument, on the other hand: it got traction on HN, therefore... something. Traction, or viewership, or ability-to-attract-attention, does not equate to value. And yes, I'm stating this as a general truth.
I agree, with some nuances. Premise 2 goes also without the word AI in the sentence. Premise 3, there's no way to solve the fact that confident AI-or-not bla bla convinces people.
If one finds an article has bla bla vibes, be it from weirdly looking pics or from sounding overly optimistic, it is everyone's choice to skip (which makes sense!) or continue to look for any value or even entertainment. Do you stop watching a movie always when it doesn't have the correct vibes from the beginning?
Indeed convincingness does not equal to value.
The reason I reacted to the comment was largely its patronizing vibes.