Yeah, I see where you're coming from and I myself am a bit surprised to see this trend on Medium. It seems fairly new. I definitely don't expect people to follow me back. For instance I just followed you now, because I think your pragmatism brings a balanced view to a conversation.

Back to the reciprocal back-scrathing trend, I'm torn and here's why. Really, it's mostly very new writers who do this. I feel for them so if their initial article is at least creative enough to warrant a helping boost, I'll do it, will follow them and I really don't care if they follow me back. They wanna get started, made a bit of effort, don't want to discourage them, many will give up soon enough anyway because it takes time, effort and passion to keep writing.

On the other hand, I also feel that all this should not have to happen, and it should all start with a fantastic, intriguing article that starts the trickling in of followers. That's how I did it and it worked. Post 10 interesting articles and you're bound to get at least 100 followers over 3 months.