I see the posting of any content for the sole purpose of gaining a reward from the community without interacting with the community as spam.

I agree.

There are few trending users who have zero or very little engagement with Steemit community. Don't comment on others posts or very little. They almost never use Steemit Chat or discord to talk to anyone. Many don't even follow anyone or only tiny amount of users.
Most of their upvotes are for themselves or on posts from the same few selected users from circle jerk who upvotes them (usually whales or friends they hang out with).