englishal,
A friend of mine had his Cessna 180 painted day glow yellow with a blue strip because of a near miss that scared the you know what out of him.
I can't believe that some pilots would encourage others to avoid using VFR Radar flight following, maybe they are working on being bold pilots. We are sitting in front of that scope to provide a service, and VFR advisories (when traffic permits) are part of our job.
Safety is a team effort and controllers are valuable part of that team.
Mike
NATCA FWA