[slipperydippery]

Nah, I've been using them correctly for years. My preference for them came by way of reading a lot in generally, but especially from Salinger.

I do them without surrounding spaces, because that's... how you're supposed to use them, and it's also less typing.

They also used to be a really good Shibboleth to tell if someone was using a Mac—the key combo on there is easy, and also easy to remember, so Mac users were far more likely than the median to employ em-dashes. It wasn't a sure tell, but it was pretty reliable.