Well, to be the lone voice in the house...
Actually, this relic'd stuff doesn't appeal to me either, but if you were to ask classical instrument luthiers (violins, violas, etc.)... this is what people buy. Relic'd classical strings are the norm these days.
My own story goes back to my youth. I remember many years ago my parents put exposed wooden beams on the ceiling of our dining room. The guys used chains and hammers to relic the beams before hanging them. The point was to arrive at an old farmhouse look, I think. By my estimation, it did look cool, and of course it was a purely cosmetic thing. Which brings me back to the Fender relics... I guess I take the "whatever works for you" strategy. The hard part to swallow is that these are *good* instruments, not First Act junk... I know over in the Ibanez collectors world, everyone cringes when someone takes a round file to a fretboard to scallop out a fingerboard or puts non-original electronics in a '70s axe... This is the opposite issue -- people want to preserve the past *not* relic it.
Two sides of the same coin, I guess.