Lazy loading clearly works because there are sites that manage it well. But when I hear "lazy loading" I think "Medium".
The typical experience reading a medium blog is that I can spend a minute, or a full 15 minutes, digesting the opening paragraphs. With the page idle that whole time. Then I can scroll down to a big brown smear, and read the whole caption before the associated image finishes loading.
I totally understand these images don't need to load with the first round of content. But you know I'm going to scroll down. Just use a timer or something.
What you are talking about is more like graceful degradation. If server side rendering is used you will be able to see content ASAP, but not able to scroll, because interaction is blocked by JS. But if you will visit page with JS disabled you will get what you want, because component generates img in noscript tag and you will be able press space to scan the page
Actually pages that use a component like the one in this submission typically show a blurry "beer goggle" version of the image, waiting for JS to replace them with a hi-res version. So with no JS you get a page of beer goggle images (BBC does this for instance).
The typical experience reading a medium blog is that I can spend a minute, or a full 15 minutes, digesting the opening paragraphs. With the page idle that whole time. Then I can scroll down to a big brown smear, and read the whole caption before the associated image finishes loading.
I totally understand these images don't need to load with the first round of content. But you know I'm going to scroll down. Just use a timer or something.