Personally, I find the "fade-in" animations quite distracting, since I read/think faster than the animations reveal information, so it constantly "interrupts"/"stutters" my thought process.
Animations are usually "serial", while (my) thought is usually "fractal"/"parallel", ie. I quickly take in the entire content, and then start focusing on individual parts according to intuitive salience (or other features).
Instead of animations, visual hierarchy / typography etc. is used by professional designers to convey eg. appropriate reading order.
