Followers on Twitter

[Basil]

I set up a Twitter account to save myself having to send lots of texts to lots of different family members when #2 son and I do our 7 day long distance walk next month.

How come I keep getting messages that "So&So is now following you"
Who are these people?  Why would they follow someone they've never heard of?
Why would they be interested in  twitter page that contains nothing but test posts?

Is this normal on Twitter?  Should I just block them?
Too late.  I just blocked them anyway.

[toekneep]

I noticed that and was a bit alarmed until I realised that they are bit like human forms of spam. One of them had already been removed by the site admin before I even had time to block them.

[andygates]

"human forms"?

Some mistake surely.

Some are pure bots.  A lot are marketing.  And some are weirdos who search for, say, "zombie" and then follow everyone who's posted on the shuffling dead in the last few days (I've done this with OSM).

[Basil]

Some are pure bots. 

Ah.  Hadn't thought of that. 
Sort of thing that searches for the use of a specific word or phrase and when a match comes up it then spams the user with related advertising?

'sfunny.  I don't remember posting a tweet where I mentioned that I would like a much larger penis.