If you call it 'getting out there and speaking to people, listening to what their problems, hopes, opinions are, and sharing the same yourself and making a connection to see if you can mutually help each other' then it suddenly sounds like a better thing, doesn't it?
If that's what you think networking is, I can't imagine that you're getting great results. Are you?
The motivation may be self-serving, but the outcome is that you help others while you help yourself.
It pays off, though. And it's fun.
But I have never started a conversation (at least, not with somebody I didn't already know well, like my boss) with the Specific Goal of Moving My Career Forward.
If that's what you think networking is, you're missing out.
I have and don't receive much spam.
Really, when you network the goal should be to share and absorb information about who is doing and interested in what. Some time, which may be anywhere from milliseconds to decades, you might remember somebody who is going to benefit from that connection (could be you, could be somebody else, could be the person you talked with) and so you suggests the parties meet.
The people you complain about, and I agree with you 100%, are those who are focused on a particular goal, in the short term.
Human connections are like any other investment, if you try to get results this quarter, you will ruin everything. If you can wait ten years, you can get the world...
Networking is about give and take, providing value and making connections.
I'm not trying to say networking is cold and calculating, or it's bad or whatever. There are 2 points I'm trying to make:
1. Networking isn't inherently about important things, and talking about important things isn't necessarily networking. "What kind of embedded database do you use for that?" can be a great networking question, and maybe it's interesting and relevant to your job, but it isn't necessarily the most important thing to you. Asking "what happens when we die" is generally not a good networking question. I just don't think defining networking as "talking about important things" is correct.
2. People who try very hard at networking to get themselves ahead, with no concern for others, are annoying. Maybe "chronic networkers" is the wrong way to put this, and I don't have a good way to describe it. But sometimes people give off a vibe that they just want to leech off of other people and learn their names so they can ask for a favor later. I'm complaining about the phonies who talk like manipulative car salesmen, not the amicable people who want to meet at coffee shops to chat and talk shop.
If you look at a less "localized" instance: Donald Trump arguably won the election because he was actually more in tune with the dissatisfaction of a significant portion of America than pretty much all other political candidates.
Sure, this might not be for the benefit of America in the long run, but the idea that unimportant things made a man president of the United States is ridiculous.
The key points he built his campaign on are obviously very important to many people, and a political campaign is just networking at scale (like any other advertisement).