I agree with all of the points of your post. While reading it, I figured out what those "follow you/follow me" people are doing. They're reducing an interaction in a social media resource designed for the exchange of ideas to a transaction.
After a few weeks of just posting and interacting, I began to think that Steemit adds new meaning to the phrase, "pay attention". Steemit is the first that I've seen to attempt to directly monetize the attention economy for the user. In contrast, all of the big players are monetizing our attention for shareholder gain. In that context, the user isn't really a stakeholder.
Anyway, your post confirms what has been on my mind with this vote for vote and follow for follow business, without consideration of the ideas shared.
Thanks for sharing.