[wymy]

The 'why' should not matter. Who really cares whether it should be done? or why they would want to do it?

If someone has an interesting problem, let's try and figure out a way to do it. Usually the why comes up along the way, but not relevant.

Thankfully, some great folks stepped in and gave quality responses.

[freshyill]

"To see if I could" is a perfectly valid reason. But "to create a logo" probably isn't in a case like this. CSS can do so many cool things, and I love seeing crazy stuff that pushes the limits (http://attasi.com/labs/picsselz/). But it's also important to know when just using an SVG image, or maybe doing something in canvas is the right solution.

[al2o3cr]

"The 'why' should not matter."

The 'why' absolutely matters - frequently, there are tradeoffs to be made in an implementation; if you don't understand "why" something is being done than it's difficult-to-impossible to evaluate which tradeoff is going to work.

In this particular case, the tradeoffs appear (based on the SO answers) to mostly revolve around how much text the technique is applied to and what the intended uses of that text are (doe selection work, does wrapping work, does accessibility work).

[PhasmaFelis]

Of course the "why" matters! What happened to intellectual curiosity? In any interesting problem, "why" is just as interesting as "how," and "how" has now been thoroughly and professionally covered.

[smoyer]

True ... so long as nobody combines this technique with marquee.

[lispylol]

In general it's absolutely relevant to not just solving A problem but the RIGHT problem. People might ask for X when they really want Y.