I'd suggest that it is a problem. It's something that Harry G. Frankfurt examined in his essay "On Bullshit" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_bullshit http://en

I'd suggest that it is a problem. It's something that Harry G. Frankfurt examined in his essay "On Bullshit" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_bullshit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_bullshit and http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html). I listened to an audio version of it and it was quite fascinating. As the Wikipedia article suggests, Frankfurt posits that bullshit is more corrosive than lies because bullshit bears no relation whatsoever to the truth. This is exactly what makes Fox News, as an example, so dangerous. They don't care about the truth when they report; they only care about getting more eyeballs. I suspect that ANY spam that humans have to deal with to determine if it's useful is much the same.