"why does the design look so crappy?!"
C'mon man. Seriously, that's all you can think about?
One of my sites averages 1500 daily visitors. People seem to like the site even though it looks "crappy".
What does this mean? Are people less superficial than everyone seems to think?
Or, if what you have to talk about is cool enough, will enough people who don't care about appearances stick?
Perhaps that's the point?
Perhaps I only want people who are not superficial enough to not be distracted by the next shiny thing (useless it may be) to be visiting my sites...?
You might find this sounding a bit arrogant - but as a webmaster, don't you have a small say about how your website has to look like?
Of course, in the written content, only bring the good, juicy stuff. But I feel the obsession with optical tidbits a bit off-turning, to be honest.