The one thing it does do, however, is boost your followers total. Now, I'm not advocating this approach, as it doesn't help the community by muddying the waters with low quality content, just offering an assessment of why people continue to do it.

The reality is, they could have done better by posting quality comments on other people's posts and probably gotten as many followers and, over time, more reputation. This is mainly what I have done, outside of today's article, because I have been too busy. Low and behold, I still get followers just from comments, and upvotes, and rewards (albeit not nearly as much). Maybe most important though, is it actually helps our community.

A rising tide helps all ships. Good post.