Fractal Obsession

So I have seen some people around who seem to have an obsession with fractals in their text sigs and it look like complete crap in my opinion. You gotta tone it down on the fractals because it overpowers the piece. Now I personally only use fractals occasionally and only generally for lighting (traditional pieces, text sigs are gay. )

What do you think people use to overpower pieces that completely ruin them? How could they improve? What are alternatives to using that piece that would achieve the same effect more pleasingly.

 

I personally think that a lot of tags and text sigs often get over sharpened. It makes the piece look really weird and kind of ruins it in my opinion.