Reputation certainly can be purchased in the real world. Hill and Knowlton is one of the premier mechanisms for improving reputation. They work just like the Steemit bots do. You pay them money, they improve your reputation.
They were employed to convince the American public that Iraqi military forces threw babies out of incubators in Kuwait so the Bush administration could attack Iraq.
Steemit bots are every bit as good and useful as Hill and Knowlton, IMHO.
Thanks!
Yes, indeed. "Image management" as they say ;) Appearances can be fabricated, but normally the majority of people don't pay for their image/appearance to be created by someone else ;)
I don't have any data to cite, but it seems apparent that using bots on Steemit to boost your apparent reputation is far more prevalent than in meatspace. Orders of magnitude more common I think.