I have the same issue with the chats. Usually somebody hits me up with ''Hi, lets be friends'' That really, really grinds my gears. It used to work when I was a kid, all we did was actually walk up to each other on the playground and say exactly that but now... I have very and I mean VERY few people I consider friends in real life. I have acquaintances, sure, but friends... that is different. I have some people here, on the platform, that I consider friends and then there are more that I consider awesome content creators but haven't talked to so often to. And I still do not call them friends for one simple reason. I don't know nothing about them, at least I do not know more than they post about.

I have encountered a lot of people contacting me and wanting to be friends. One or two bluntly admitted that they reached out just because I was pretty. They hadn't seen my profile and didn't even ask about it(which shows that they had no idea if my inner world is pretty as well) What they did do was complain about how little they earned.

BTW, if I wanted to date someone online, I would not be on steemit looking for him. A compliment is nice, but solely basing your friend choices on how pretty a picture looks screams ''shallow'' to me.

Now, I understand how hard it is to start out, I have been there. But I never walked around asking for votes on my posts(except once, for a contest and I usually help people if they are competing in a contest themselves, with a quality entry, of course). I was grateful that I was even noticed. Occasionally, I will have someone reaching out and genuinely asking for help but this is happening rarer and rarer lately. Still, there are so many new people who deserve a dash of recognition, but those mostly do not scream v4v in chats.