Re 'Why these crap journals even exist is a mystery to me.'
Don't journals make money by charging academics to read the whole paper?
Thank god for CS's culture of pre-prints on arXiv.
Promotion committees (hopefully!) know which journals or publications are low quality. If they are unfamiliar, they generally don't have time (or inclination) to verify the paper(s) or publication itself. Especially true when it's a slightly different sub-field than their own. So it often comes down to a simple count of pubs. That's usually all the credit they need!