Am I the only one who thinks avis slow down the forum and should be removed? It'd make the forum's server much better

They have nothing to do with the forum's server because they're uploaded on different servers e.g. minus' server, imgur's server etc.

No because they are hotlinked from other sites

They don't affect the server.
Beside the forum would look ugly without avis.

No. It's videos and those DAMN advertisements.

They may make your personal loading speeds slower, but you can make it so that everyone's primary avi shows up instead of their high quality ones. It can help increase speeds on slower computers!

No, because they're hosted on different sites. It's only slower because it takes longer to load the web page for each new image that isn't in your devices cache which is entirely dependent on your Internet speed and the status of the gif's host site.