It's a style. It's like with skin smoothing, flash or anything else. It can be done so it's completely unnoticed and natural or it could be so amazingly over the top. Either way, people have different opinions on it.
I just hate the anti-HDR band wagon. I enjoy some of those over the top photos, but it seems on some site to moment some unfortunate person posts an HDR photo, there's a 10 page thread about how bad HDR photo is with no one directly commenting on the photo itself. I've never really made any HDR images as it's not my thing, but I respect those with the eye for the shots and the creativity to do it.