Ever see accounts that follow tens of thousands, and maybe they have 1500 followers, then a steady stream of posts with zero or slightly higher views and no engagement in sight?
I call that one, "Fishing for followers." They follow countless accounts hoping to get a follow back. That's their goal. Follow 20, get 1 follow back, in their mind, is productive.
Then they have to sit there and look stupid. Their "followers" from day one did not give a crap about their content. Their "followers" have the same mentality; same goals. Make number go up. Their following consists of thousands of accounts and combined have a miniscule amount of HP, because it's all noobs, doing the same thing, thinking they'll have an edge.
All they're left with is a list of people that ignore them. Unfollowing 100k accounts attempting to cover up that behavior is also logged, so they can't even deny it.
Maybe over time someone could amass tens of thousands of followers doing that. Then post, and highlight the fact (with a massive spotlight) even the tens of thousands of people following are seemingly (on the surface) not interested in their work, making them appear to be a complete failure.
Silly humans...
Reminds me of this one account:
At first it looks quite impressive, but one time I noticed it was spam following accounts so I asked what's up and he replied with "I'm doing an experiment". By spam following I mean literal spam, like after a week he was following 80k accounts or something, then all of a sudden his bot removed all followers except for a few. Many had decided to follow him back which now looks like he really is an amazing hiver that many followed cause of how amazing he is when in reality he never posted or engaged much or curated for that matter.
It's a bit annoying cause I never attempted such cheap tricks, while I can't deny a lot of my followers are from being trending/hot during the days we had a lot of active daily users and consistent curation which may have gotten many to follow based on the delegated HP it still annoys me that some can easily replicate such numbers without putting in any effort thus making most other account's numbers not mean anything.
I'm looking at one now with over 8k followers, following 131419 accounts... LOL! We only have ten votes per day and 24 hours in a day. It's blatantly obvious what the goal was there and the outcome is typical, like I explained. Big number, no views.
It's so weird because it takes less effort to simply grind honestly, and it yields better results every single time.
That old "web2 mindset" is an odd one. I even remember back in the day a "rapper" buying votes, then using that "clout" to act like a big deal, even going to far as claiming the votes were not purchased and those are his actual fans, and the fake rewards were "earned", then pissing me off claiming I point out his charade only because I'm "jealous."
Silly humans...
Probably worth noting we all have "dead followers". Impossible to avoid. Stings a bit when you're accumulating a following organically. I know from experience. The ones farming followers don't care and will most likely attempt to replace dead followers with more potential dead followers. You're just a number to them. As a consumer, that stings. I am not just some number that exists to make you look good.
Is that Scott? XD I remember noticing that some time ago and was like wtf lol why?
Organic is so much better, you get the people that actually are interested in you over time and they're sure to stick around longer and form actual relationships, but yeah as you say some people don't care about that, they just care about numbers.
Did the precise number of accounts following give it away? Fancy way to say a name without saying it... LOL!
Good dude but micromanages his time away. And I've noticed the concepts here, explained several different ways, still sound foreign and maybe even absurd to someone who's "good" at web2 tricks and gimmicks. Hard to break through that mindset and clue people in once they're in so deep.
lol nah I just noticed that in the past and was rather curious why he had bothered as there's not many others, or why at the very least did he not unfollow them again like the example above did.
From an experiment prespective, he did well. Many newbies might follow him for the fact that he have alot of followers.
I wasn't there before fork so when I asked some of people why they have alot of followers and most looks like dead users. They informed me about follow for follow services of steempileofshit.
There was alot of accounts something like arun1, arun2 to 400 or 600. It's connected to spt tag. So even you get a monster-curator or steemmonsters upvote, get 600 upvotes. Seeing how followers and upvotes are here on hive, I would like to conclude that we are also effected by this mentality on hive but much lower effect here.
Followers or upvotes numbers doesn't mean much here though as HP determines everything which is kind of progressive approach for such a new technology.
People will be people, anywhere they go, so yes there will always be some of that mindset. 1 vote from 1 human is "lesser" than 600 votes from 1 human, even though it's the same result. One simply looks better and it's no secret people are superficial.
I guess amount of engagement on his posts is the only indicator and difference between his and my account now.