But here's the thing that's perhaps most important: If you "curate" the comments on your own posts with replies and upvotes, that's how you build "followers" that ACTUALLY FOLLOW YOU, as opposed to 3500 "followers" who really don't give a rodent's rear end whether you're dead or alive!
As someone who's been mostly commenting in the spare time (for now), I wholeheartedly agree - it's kinda frustrating when you actually want to interact with the author of a good post and they don't reply to you. I'm not even talking upvotes, since everyone has a different strategy and guys like me don't have enough firepower to make a difference with a vote anyway. However, when I see that someone takes the time to sift through the comments and interact with people, I will usually remember that and visit their posts more often.
The thing that keeps coming to mind is that this is SOCIAL media, which suggests interaction and engagement. The whole "follow me" thing is kind of mindless because it's absolutely impossible to actively participate in more than 200-300 active bloggers' worlds.
I have 3600+ followers and it would take a superhuman effort to actually go visit every single one; let alone I have no idea who 75% of them even are. But that's also how "greater" (outside Steemit) social media works... some people interest, fascinate, entertain, shock or whatever us ENOUGH that we follow them and don't expect a return follow.
Outside Steemit, I have about 50-ish blogs I check up on at least once a month. To the extent that I communicate with ANY of those bloggers, it's because leave them a comment. None of them subscribe to my own external blogs and I don't expect them to. But it's cool when they respond to one of my comments!