Metadata exists in a competitive world. Suppliers compete to sell their goods, cranks compete to convey their crackpot theories (mea culpa), artists compete for audience. Attention-spans and wallets may not be zero-sum, but they’re damned close.
That’s why:
* A search for any commonly referenced term at a search-engine like Altavista will often turn up at least one porn link in the first ten results.
* Your mailbox is full of spam with subject lines like “Re: The information you requested.”
* Publisher’s Clearing House sends out advertisements that holler “You may already be a winner!”
* Press-releases have gargantuan lists of empty buzzwords attached to them.
Meta-utopia is a world of reliable metadata. When poisoning the well confers benefits to the poisoners, the meta-waters get awfully toxic in short order.