So, in an earlier post, I discussed the concept of optionality. Here I am going to talk about the dark side of the concept
I think that the dark side comes in as a form of the tragedy of the commons.
Spam is a prime example of this. The fact is that spam has an extremely low open rate, most of it gets caught up in the various spam filters.
So, why bother sending it in the first place? Because the cost of sending spam out is close to zero, to the point where even one person falls for your scam for every ten million emails you have sent, you make a profit. There is only an upside, and the spammers are in effect taking a lot of small bets, the vast majority of which will not pay off.
I think the spammers of Steem (the follow me spammers, as well as those that post irrelevant links wherever they can) are trying to do the same thing. They think that if they get even one upvote on their "writing". It does not matter if they piss off dozens of people in the process. While this is a very short sighted view, it explains the prevalence of what we have been seeing