I don't know that they were artistic frauds - perhaps one test for this is how their work lives on in other artists. From that point of view, Burroughs probably lives on in his paranoid way; Kerouac less so; Ginsberg I have no idea. But yes I hear you that if older people in your life handed you this stuff as anything to admire or live by, then the only self-enlivening response is to reject it completely.