I certainly do that -- it's just that I don't think this activity can be usefully labeled "ad hominem". There is a tricky part in your sentence, though -- what is that "should be listening to" and where does it come from? How do I know what I should be listening to?
How do you know what you shouldn't be listening to? Or, to put a finer edge on it - you're already using a criteria for deciding what you shouldn't be listening to, the criteria you refuse to call ad-hominem. Why did you choose that criteria?
Why did you choose that criteria?
Past experience, general considerations, inferences, all the usual stuff.
In the Internet age you decline much MUCH more content than you accept. The opportunity costs are noticeable and you pretty much have to prefilter your information flow if you don't want to be standing with your face in front of an operating water canon.
Given all this, the selection process is going to be noisy, slanted, and very much imperfect. I suspect that opportunities to improve it are going to revolve around more filtering, not less. That's a...
This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.