Welcome to the blight of the web designer.
I just went to visit your page in IE 7 and it’s completely illegible. The text is black on black. And unfortunately while it’s easy to pull the “well you should be using Firefox because it works perfectly (which I did after)” it should be noted that around 40% of the addressable internet is still stuck on IE.
That little footnote aside, I think the current state of web design isn’t much different then the “me too” approach of phone design, car design, etc.
I think you’ve seen the more simplified blog-style format take off so much because the types of content have shifted in recent years.
You used to see web pages that were very dynamic in presentation (wild flash animations, transitions) but very static in content. Once a page was created it probably stayed that way for months if not years.
Now the trend has shifted. Content that pops up on the top of a blog/news site might only be there for a matter of minutes before flowing down the list into history. The site design focuses more on the presentation and organization of that content into a way they can still digest it to users as fast as possible. Thats why you don’t see blogs presented with whimsical animations, deep hierarchys of organization, etc. People want to know what the latest fake screenshot of a Mac product is, and then move on to the next article.
I’m sure at some point you’ll see people start to react to the chemically neutered state of the internet, but I think with the explosion of content it will take a long time for people to get there.
I don’t think it’s bad, just a trend. I miss the early 90’s when everything was Times New Roman on a Netscape gray background.