Hey Tony, I'm with you there with shoutouts being part of one whole community and it's important that we help one another out.

I know for myself shout-outs were a bit of a turn-off for me because in the past I used to get emails from people in the past who said they'd love to "collaborate" with me on social media. And by collaborate they mean I pay them money to have a single post published in their Instagram account telling people to check me out/buy whatever product I was going to sell.

That sort of stuff left a bad taste in my mouth and can speak to the whole cop-out aspect where you're just paying to get genuine views rather than someone genuinely liking your stuff and being like "hey this person is cool too, check them out."