Yes, that needed to be said.
The whole begging for votes and follows thing is supremely annoying, and I also generally do NOT interact with that approach. If I feel patient, I might post something about "A better approach might be to interact with the content, etc." as a response.
I think a lot of newcomers here have long forgotten that it took them four years to get 500 "friends" on Farcebook, or 500 followers on twit'em.
Yeah. That's for certain. I was thinking about that the other day--250 followers took an age on other sites, and here, it's two months. And here, it actually means something, too.
I really think the long game is the only one that works here. Yes, you can make a couple bucks in a hurry by upvoting yourself and spamming your own feed, but over time that's a losing tactic. Those that do this the right way need to be patient, especially when it looks like in the short term, we're getting hosed.