The internet has done for the spread of inane information what splitting the atom did for bombs.

In both cases there has been an inconceivable expansion in the yield of unwholesome byproducts.

And although the internet’s side effects don’t attack you at the cellular level, the absence of gamma rays doesn’t, in my view, excuse the purveyors of online dreck which fouls my email inbox with an inevitability that both impresses and depresses me.

I’m impressed because someone, apparently, has made a job out of analyzing such weighty matters as the favorite breakfast cereal in each state.

Although I suppose it’s possible — likely, even — that the only actual humans involved in these operations are the programmers who set up the algorithms.

Most of the ridiculous emails I receive daily include someone’s name and phone number, should I desire to know more about, for instance, which states’ residents are most obsessed with the HBO series and video game “The Last of Us.”

I’ve never bothered to call any of these people.

I doubt I’d be able to distinguish between a human and a bot anyway.

Operating under the assumption that these emails wouldn’t exist if the people responsible didn’t make money from the scheme, I am intrigued by the notion that anyone could make a living — to cite another recent example — by perusing Google Trends search data to create an impolite index for each state.

This sounds to me about as exciting as working in a potato chip factory and plucking the occasional unappetizing green or brown chip off a conveyor belt.

Yet the email arrived, telling me that Oregon is the seventh most impolite state, “with only 249 of their searches including polite terms per 100,000 residents.”

I know nothing about research protocols but this approach seems to me less than rigorous, scientifically speaking.

“Polite” is subjective, for one thing.

But even if I conceded, for the sake of a silly argument, that it was possible to gauge how polite Oregon’s 4 million residents are in a collective sense, I don’t think internet search terms are the most compelling criteria.

But of course that doesn’t matter in this context.

The point here is that data about how we use the internet are so voluminous, and so accessible, that it’s possible to rate states on any metric, no matter how ridiculous.

(And no need for all those time-consuming phone conversations with actual people, the technique traditional pollsters have relied on for decades.)

The aforementioned “The Last of Us,” for example.

The email on that topic boasted that the “online gaming experts at SolitaireBliss.com analyzed Google keywords planner data for various search terms associated with ‘The Last of Us’ TV series and the video game in the United States. These terms were then combined to give each state a ‘total search score’ per 100,000 people to discover which states have been loving ‘The Last of Us’ over the last 12 months.”

The email — in common with almost all such missives I get — touted this endeavor as “research,” as though sober academics were delving into subjects vital to society.

Breakfast cereal, for instance.

This, at least, is a matter in which I have a personal interest, quite unlike my fellow Oregonians’ level of obsession with “The Last of Us” or their predilection for using polite terms in their online investigations.

Breakfast cereal is my favorite food.

I daresay if it did not exist, I would long since have withered away, whisked along by the wind like a desiccated corn husk.

At any rate, my culinary life would be bland indeed without those wonderful, colorful boxes and their magical contents.

The engineers who build such wondrous machines as space rockets, the architects who design skyscrapers and bay-spanning bridges, they receive most of the accolades.

But what has a rocket engine ever done for you?

You certainly can’t pour one into a bowl, splash on cold milk and experience a few minutes of sweet, somewhat wholesome bliss.

The people who put astronauts on the moon have nothing, in my estimation, on those who have transformed such simple ingredients as oats, corn, rice and wheat into a smorgasbord of delectable products.

Boosting tons of metal into orbit is impressive, to be sure.

But imagine, for a moment, the ingenuity, the world-altering insight, that a person must possess to look at a pile of grain and conceive of Trix or Fruit Loops or Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

In a just world those geniuses would be as famous as Von Braun and Oppenheimer.

And yet, despite my great affection for breakfast cereal, I was disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that the online “researcher” had a go at the world of flakes, pebbles, crunches and charms.

The email showed up on March 7, which is National Cereal Day.

(An event of which I was ignorant. My affinity for cereal is such that it would never occur to me to celebrate it on only one day.)

The email included a U.S. map showing each state’s “favorite” breakfast cereal. This designation, which seems to me as relevant as states’ politeness index, is based on “geotagged twitter data in the last 3 months tracking tweets, hashtags, and direct keyword phrases about each state’s favorite cereal. This was done by running a query in each state for 50 of the most popular brands, and seeing which brands had the most tweets with a positive sentiment.”

The winner, based on this dubious criteria, was Cinnamon Toast Crunch. It is the favorite cereal in 18 states, including Oregon.

Honey Nut Cheerios is the runner-up, with 11 states. Lucky Charms and Frosted Flakes tied for third with six states each.

I suppose I could come up with information that’s less important than this, but nothing occurs to me at this moment.

I’m sure my email inbox will provide the answer.

And probably in less time than it takes for one of my favorite cereals — Corn Chex — to soften to the perfect texture in its milky 2% bath.