I don't understand. Is resume formatting that big of a deal for job seekers? I assumed (perhaps wrongly) that formatting a resume was trivial, but that managing your job search effectively was hard.
Conveying the message that you don't care about our decadent society's obsession with superficiality and appearance, or whatever message you convey with an ASCII-only resume, obviously works in some situations. But in general, Postel's Law applies here.