[porpoise]

> and it feels to me that page loads are much faster, and in some case more readable (pages feel 'cleaner'?)

More readable, and also helps one focus on the content. A lot of web publications with literary pretensions (New Yorker, Quillette, LRB …) use pretty classic-looking externally loaded serif fonts for their articles, which not only slows down reading but can also (IMO) make one less critical of the content than one otherwise would be.

If I were the editors of these magazines I would be seriously tempted to force the use of Comic Sans for all article content. May not be good from advertising point of view but it signals a kind of intellectual honesty that I suspect is valued higher by their readership than a "classic look"