Steembots - friend or foe?

So after using steem blockchain services for a few weeks, l've noticed that there are a a lot of bots following my account possibly more bots than humans.

While I see advantages to the curation trails for specific things such as music, i see massive disadvantages to gaining proper followerships and upvotes when there's a huge amount of bot spam around.

Why? Bots while providing a service are a highly irritating issue to deal with as a content creator. What advantages do bots afford me? Of the followership boasted by many bots. How many are active and engaged, how many are dead or un-used accounts and how many are other bots?

So if not bots then what?

What makes you engage?