meta meta on the wall

I've tried looking for this, but was surprised not to find anything about it: the meta tag keywords.
I've got this string gut feeling that Ask gives A LOT of importance to the keywords you stuff into the meta tag. I was ranking very well on all the SE except for Ask. I then tried to see what the people ranking well on Ask were doing and it seems all simply had the meta Keywords stuffed. No need for H1s anchor text or anything like that. I'm now testing this out. I had omitted putting a Keyword list on my site so that my competitors could just rip all my hard work in keyword research.
To be honest, i really don't give a **** about Ask, and i think it's serps are lousy and WAY to sponsored. But unfortunately they have mounted this huge ad campaign here in england, and now the "populace" are all using it. It will die, obviously, just another fad. But in the mean time i've got my boss on my back....