[TeMPOraL]

You're right, but there is one key insight you need for your view to be complete: most websites are created to sell you shit - often services, which exist only to be bought. Their actual usefulness is pretty much irrelevant beyond the point people start paying for them. Your ability to use a website / webapp to create value is not something they care about.

As an industry we're hurting ourselves by being in this state of cognitive dissonance. The result is that designers try to apply patterns for selling people shit when they're working on tools, even if given tool is the "real deal" and not meant to drive sales by appearance.