Does e-mail address obfuscation actually work?

Problem

Most of the time when I see someone post their email address online, especially if it's a personal address, they use something like me [at] example [dot] com instead of the actual email address (me@example.com). Even top members of this community use similar styles in their profiles: jt.superuser[AT]gmail[DOT]com quixote dot su over yonder near that gmail place The typical rationale is that this kind of obfuscation prevents the email address from being automatically recognized and harvested by spammers. In an age where spammers can beat all but the most diabolical captchas, is this really true? And given how effective modern spam filters are, does it really matter if your email address is harvested?