On mastodon, I’m starting to be followed by accounts I have no relationship with at all (a famous guy I doubt would ever follow me, a supposed magazine about a subject I never talked about and with a name not really related to the subject of their posts…).
Is this a trend? Is it a strategy to get people to follow them back so they have more followers? Is this the fediverse version of spam?
It happens sometimes. Depending on the details, you can report them as spam, just remove the follow, or ignore it.
In some cases it could also be people that genuinely want to follow you. People often talk about one topic but still care about other stuff.
@underscores
Many people fall into that category. I follow a lot of interesting accounts that have nothing to do with what I talk about on my channel. Sometimes you follow people because they know more about a subject than you do, or are just interesting.