Only being here for almost two months, I've run into some of the stuff you talked about in your post. The spam. The follow for follow. And I frankly, don't understand it. If we just blindly follow each other, the quality of content here will only decrease. Good content creators should be rewarded . .

I decided to invest enough to get a decent amount of SP. It seemed like a wise thing to do. I'm currently in the process of getting back into blogging, gaining followers etc . . but I want them to be "real", if that makes sense. Not a tit for tat sort of thing. It diminishes the value.

A well-thought out comment does wonders for me when I write out a post. The make me feel happy about writing, plain and simple. The generic comments for self-upvotes (done by users with high and low amounts of SP) I read, but for the most part, skip over. But they are in the minority, thankfully, and just move on after a short time.