Probably you are right. Early adopters prefer not to be bullshitted generally, just like how Google in the early days optimized relevancy in search results as opposed to popularity.
As more people adopted Google, it became more popularity oriented.
Personally I pay more not to be bs-d, but I know many people who prefer to be lied to, and I expect this part of the personalization in the future.
It kind of does matter if it's real, because in my experience this is something OpenAI has thought about a lot, and added significant protections to address exactly this class of issue.
Throwing out strawman hypotheticals is just going to confuse the public debate over what protections need to be prioritized.
The sychophant will be back because they accidentally stumbled upon an engagement manager's dream machine.