I've no idea who these thousand are, but it's quite possible they are bot accounts hoping to reap some curation rewards and they follow Partiko posts. Steem is still a tiny community of real people and you have to sell out your audience. I've just posted and commented a lot because I enjoyed it and I've made friends who support me.
I know some big accounts like Raspberry Pi stuff and if you use the #stem tag they may see yours. I enjoy your comedy posts too. You have good content. I think you could do better here.
I still think the open source world ought to be more into Steem. It's open source, decentralised, uncensored and it can find projects. I may do more Linux related posts to try and bring in more readers.