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Somewhat surprisingly, some 'evil bits' like the .xxx TLD, seem to be getting traction.

It is only gaining traction from people who want the bit explicitly turned off. People are lining up to pay $100 and change to prevent coca-cola.xxx and nike.xxx from being registered. Not a single person I've talked to in adult is seriously considering a move to .xxx

I had the same reaction. It seems like DNT is more notable for reducing interest and effort in actual solutions. However, the EFF (whose opinion on this I'd trust) appears to indicate DNT is complimentary with things like AdBlock and IE's TPL's:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/03/tracking-protection-li...

When the IP standard was defined, was this bit purposely left undefined? Is this newer RFC really a joke, and nothing but a joke? How come the IETF allows just-kidding RFCs? I'm puzzled...

Note the date. Typically people submit joke RFCs on April 1st.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools%27_Day_RFC

Also, RFCs are not terribly heavyweight technical documents. They're essentially memos, not ISO standards. Any (demonstrably competent) person can submit a RFC, and if it becomes popular, then the idea enters the standards track, and new, better RFCs are issued based on it.