Social media is, indeed, the reason having a lot of followers became such a superficial thing, making people do whatever in their power just to see the number of people following them increase.
And I also agree with the fact that it's hard to keep up with knowing a lot of people. I can barely remember my own birthday sometimes, so knowing and talking to thousands of people all the time would be a nightmare.
I wrote the article thinking more about how big the number of followers is in some cases, and how little interaction you see all around the Internet. People follow random things, and then they forget about them. That, or they forget as long as they don't receive anything for their "follow".
This is, of course, a problem that appears on every platform, and it's kinda sad. I also believe that less is, in a lot of cases, more, but it still surprises me to see how many people have hundreds if not thousands of followers, and 90% of them are inactive, especially on a website where you can make money.
I guess there's nothing you can do about human nature. After all, most people are greedy and only search for profit. If following someone means receiving something in return, they'll do it. If getting naked in your images helps you get more followers, someone will do it.
It's just how it is, and there's nothing we can do to change it. Even before the Internet, people were the same, the only difference is that they weren't using Facebook to display their "desperation" for followers and attention, they simply tried to do it "face to face".
Totally agree. Any platform only mirrors the society and human nature.