This was an interesting and nicely written. I enjoyed your emphasis on how important it is to be sincere and how you genuinely want to help other indie devs.
"But how the hell could you, let alone myself, go through with doing something so corporate?" This sentence interested me and I have heard something along these lines before. If I line this up with my current marketing work, one could argue that I posted content with the intent of gaining a playerbase and thus gaining customers, which may be perceived as corporate. As a mostly solo indie dev, this might be more forgiven, however I wont deny that my personal goal is to make a living doing what I love. I believe that I can my game can bring people joy, and that makes it valuable. Having a product that I believe can bring entertainment to someone's life makes it worth selling (and this can even apply to a game that is free and is simply marketed with the intent of gaining players).
I love my game and therefore I want to share it with others, which is what makes me find joy in marketing. I come from a background of content creation in entertainment, so I believe this may be part of why marketing is something I can embrace.
I've never had a huge player base, so I can only imagine how scary it'd be to have a swarm of negative Steam reviews or worse. There is always a risk to putting yourself out there.
For me, the risk of putting myself out there is far less scary than the risk and thought of my game never seeing the light of day.
Hope this helps!
YOU ARE AWESOME!