Those posts lost their charm once these people came along and started farming for followers. It lost all meaning. We used to have to earn a following by, like you said, posting good stuff and hoping people would come along and discover you.
Some would prefer to treat each other like a statistic. I saw one new member working hard(sarcasm, he was spamming) to get followers and now has over 2500. His posts get maybe 10 views and earn pennies.
That's a fine way to make yourself look like a failure.
You got that right!!! I know I'm no William Faulkner, but I work really hard on my stories... It gets depressing to have 800+ "followers" and 27 actual readers. What am I doing this for???
You're doing this because you enjoy it. Same damn reason I'm here. No matter how odd things can be here at times, I just keep plugging away, and so do you. You can never think that they think you're doing poorly. They didn't look, so how would they know!
Point well taken!!!