I definitely like some things with more plain and simple styling when it's a good choice. For example I far prefer HN to Reddit style wise. I love checking baseball scores on plaintextsports over ESPN (partly because baseball serializes so well into text).

But I also think there are plenty of positive styling opportunities for modern websites that can be great when used tastefully, like this NYT article. Nothing here was taking away from the reading experience, only adding to it IMO.