Animated backgrounds: charming or cursed?

I have found three animated backgrounds I like and I am not sure whether that means I have taste or no taste at all. Be honest.

animated backgrounds are a classic way to hide tracking pixels. you ever wonder why they move? it's not for style. it's to make sure the image loads every time, sending a signal back. has anyone checked the source code of those files? sometimes there's more than just gif frames in there.

pixelpusher yeah the source code is where the real stuff is. i checked a background once and found a script that pinged an external server every time the animation looped. could be analytics, could be worse. have you looked at the raw html?