There is a human behind every bot. As a bot user myself, I can tell you that I DO read content, I DO upvote posts manually when I have the time to read, and I DO engage with the community.
Bots are not perfect. They don't have the intelligence yet to vote exactly the same way people would vote. But if they could, would there be a reason to complain?
Maybe we just need better bots.
As far as crap content, that's subjective. The trending page has a lot of bot upvotes. It also almost always has something I want to read. And stuff I don't want to read. And a Chinese girl in a bikini, which I don't care to read but might want to look at ;)
So here is your manual upvote from somebody who uses bots. Cheer up, work hard, and don't worry about the bots. They're not hurting Steemit.
I feel myself miserable when I got upvotes, say, from good-karma and all his trail and I know none read my great post.
I feel like I got alms instead of earned reward.