It was an experiment with results that he told everyone not to blindly copy. But tons of fools copied him anyway, tweaking the wording to be more grating and obnoxious, littering the Internet with trash.
Well, as long as those fools are littering their own pages I think the problem isn't as bad as you make it look.
As for whether it works or not: yes, it works. A 'call to action' as it is called has been proven to work long before Drew Curtis added his to his twitter button.
