Some of those are definitely real. Lol. I know them. You're right, some little flood started happening. Mute keeps them out of your own "public tag" pages. What I don't like it the micro-inflation of my numbers. Still, I try to visit every follower and assess. So nothing will change there. I've flat out asked people to unfollow me and they have. Some accounts, like the aaaaa type- are actually indexing and resteeming accounts. Very few people go look to find out.
Human disinterested followers I don't mind either. I'm inactive on many of the people's pages I follow like dev, witnesses, etc. I just want to see their articles in my feed to stay informed. That's also fine.
Lack of interaction is not always a sign of lack of interest.
I don't mind these kinds of spammers on the blockchain. Like you said, they're benign. I don't even care if they upvote each other. As long as they're not posting phishing links and hijacker software, I'm fine that they exist. Witnesses don't like these kinds of softminers because they bloat the blockchain and they cost them more in ram.
I know a lot of your followers are real. But in only referring to the new ones you get instantly after creating a post.
See also my reply above https://steemit.com/blog/@crypto-econom1st/re-omitaylor-re-crypto-econom1st-re-omitaylor-3-months-together-on-steem-20180527t173301386z#@crypto-econom1st/re-tcpolymath-re-crypto-econom1st-re-omitaylor-re-crypto-econom1st-re-omitaylor-3-months-together-on-steem-20180527t212643769z
I'm going to follow along your experiments. :)
Thanks!
I hope you enjoy them. And if you have any requests let me know!