Did you offer your conversation partner anything of value, other than an implied threat of disapproval if they failed to accede to your demand? Were you thinking about their goals, other than how they related to your desire to receive praise?

This is the beginning of the conversation in question:

Alicorn: I did work and request praise!

Alicorn: You are not fulfilling my request.

Alicorn: You should fix that.

Interlocutor Mine, Name Redacted: *praise*

Alicorn: :D

Interlocutor Mine, Name Redacted: Good job, keep up the good work

Alicorn: *is pleased with self*

Prior context in an earlier conversation included an exchange about how I've been having trouble getting work done lately, and should be chided if I didn't do any today. So... I guess I offered my charming company and a smiley? IMNR is my friend, we talk frequently, I usually operate under the assumption that IMNR has some desire to interact with me in a friendly manner. IMNR is free to disabuse me of this notion at any time and I will leave him alone.

If you took your conversant's goals into consideration and offered something for what you wanted, then you manipulated. If you didn't take them into account, then you objectified.

Explicit trades of services do not have to be objectifying. I exchange Christmas gifts with various relatives, and if I stopped giving people Christmas presents, I'd probably stop getting them; that doesn't mean anybody is being objectified.

Or do you claim that there is a third category, in which you thought about their goals, but didn't allow this to affect your choices in any way?

Something can be an influencing factor without being a controlling factor. For instance, when I make curry, the cayenne pepper contributes to the curry being spicy. If I left out the cayenne, it would still be spicy, because there are a half a dozen other spicy things in it.

Or perhaps the loophole is that if you just state what you want, then other people simply "should" give it to you, and that therefore this isn't manipulation?

No, not really. Certain desires ought to be accommodated (e.g. I just asked my roommate if it'd bother her for me to have music on in a particular room when she went to bed; she said yes, so I moved to a different room). Certain desires don't have to (I doubt I would have harbored resentment if IMNR had refrained from supplying desired praise) and satisfying them is super-erogatory.

Now, let's contrast your strategy with a pickup-artist strategy, known as the Apocalypse Opener.

Meh. It looks honest enough; some phatic introduction and a question. There doesn't seem anything wrong with this strategy in particular to me. It surprises me that it works, but that's purely empirical.

If people want things of value from me, they can ask me for them. If I want things from other people, I ask for them. If I have something I think someone else would like and I like them and want them to have it, I offer it to them. People who like me and have things they think I would like and want me to have them offer them to me. These events don't always occur simultaneously, but over the course of a friendship or other extended interpersonal association, it works well enough to suit me.