Because filling ourselves up with followers makes us feel less lonely, right?
When Social Media first lifted it’s ugly head (we didn’t think so at the time) we followed as many folks as we could on Twitter, because it was almost a dead-cert that they would follow you back and they did, stupidly!
There was an unspoken etiquette. I follow you and you follow me back, we didn’t have to ask for it, most of us just did it. Fast forward to 2018 and whenever we now follow someone on Twitter, we definitely do not get a follow back.
Then when we realised it was all going pear shaped, we didn’t follow people back and they didn’t follow us back, our follower and following tally became out of sync. Twitter limited our ability to follow, I think the number was more than 2000 twits, it then blocked us from following anymore until we ourselves got some followers back. To get the whole thing into balance.
The etiquette no longer exists, everyone is out for themselves and we want our stuff to be seen, never mind about the people we follow, we’re not even bothering to look at them.
It doesn’t matter the other way around. You can have hundreds of thousands of followers and you don’t have to follow any of them back. Roll on the celebrity in that case.
Twitter has become the home of celebrities who need social proof that they are loved and even compare the amount of followers they have with each other, like a real-time popularity contest. I’ve even heard Simon Cowell talk about this with his judging team on Britain’s Got Talent.
Happy tweeting!