Well, you can't fault people for trying new things. I guess we can call that progress.
I've always had a lot of formulaic responses to my posts, and I likely get more than my fair share since I am pretty liberal in my up voting of comments.
I don't have time to follow everyone, nor would I want to. I am attracted to people's profiles either because I stumbled upon them, had someone else I know refer them, or they have engaged in very MEANINGFUL ways in comments with me somewhere. That engagement will lead me to "who is this?" and I'll go look at profiles.
If you follow me. Follow me because you like my content. Don't follow me for a follow back. I don't do that as it dilutes my feed for things I am actually interested in. That doesn't mean I might not be interested in your posts. I actually may, once I discover them. I do not up vote, "followed, follow me", and I very rarely actually look at the profile of someone who says that unless I have a glutton of free time which LAUGH that almost never happens.
So within the past week I've gotten people asking if they can have permission to resteem my posts. Of course you never need to ask permission and this is new. It is interesting that I have seen this coming from several different accounts.
Is it that it will get the person curious in their own ego to go look at the profile where some of their work is resteemed. If you want to resteem my work have at it. If you want to translate one of my posts to another language. Feel free.
That doesn't mean I'll follow, etc. I stated how I pick followers. I have a lot of projects and interest so I am pretty careful about followers.
Resteeming my posts and saying things like I'll follow you, please follow me will not work. I am not interested in people who follow me and have no interest in what my posts are actually about. I want people to follow me because they like my content. If those people in turn engage with me with more than "nice post", or quoting part of my own post with their added "nice post" then you may catch my attention and I'll check out your profile.
I appreciate followers. I really do. This is WHY I up vote comments the way I do. Yet, I want genuine followers, not robotic ones. I want people to follow me because they want to engage based upon my posts whether they agree with me or disagree with me.
You can inspire me to do more by simply engaging with me.