I understand the need for fledgling authors to get promotion and fans and a following that will hopefully help lead them to their career, I do.

To be honest, there comes a point where they should no longer need it. When you have say, 25,000 subscribers, why even bother shilling for more?
If you have that many fans and you're still struggling, some blue text really isn't going to help.

In the past before the blue text self promotion links started, I would look up authors that I liked.

I really feel that's how it should be. If you really like a story, you check the user profile and see if they have a subreddit - or you can google their name.
This relatively new culture of fairly shameless self promotion does detract from the stories to me. It cheapens them somehow.
I've seen it argued that writers put time and effort into these pieces and deserve recognition - but I feel that you should be getting something out of your stories anyway; from the joy of writing, from the thrill of having someone like or comment on your work, or from simply striving to improve your craft.

I also want readers to feel like I wrote the story for them; that it was a personal experience between the two of us.
Pushing more of my work on them in such a crass way just feels like I'm shotgunning my work at as many people as possible and hoping I hit someone.
More to the point, I guess I want people to like my work organically - to like something enough to go exploring on their own, rather than me shoving it in their face.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that this behaviour makes it pretty easy to divine people's reasons for writing on here.