I think this is a term that applies to a lot of the followers people have. They are there, we can see the numbers, in some cases going over 1000 or more. However, when it comes to our articles, we only see a handful of people commenting, upvoting, resteeming and interacting in any way with our work.
I start to believe that followers are, in a lot of situations, a bunch of useless numbers that appear on your profile that are supposed to make you feel good about yourself. The truth is that most of the followers we have are non-existent. We have people who like and interact with what we do, but besides them, there are only numbers.
The easiest way to see that is by publishing a bunch of articles throughout the week and then looking at those who are interacting with them. You will probably only see a few people who you can easily recognize, because they were always there, commenting and upvoting, but that's pretty much it.
The rest of them are simply not there, not at that moment, not ever. Unless you're a really popular person or unless you invested a lot of money into your Steem Power and there's a chance that you may upvote one of the people who commented on your article, then most of your "followers" will simply ignore your work.
I got the idea for this article after looking at the "NEW" section of Steemit and seeing a guy who uploaded several "articles" today, and by that I mean a bunch of random memes, who had over 2500 followers and absolutely no interaction on his "work".
He had money invested into Steem Power, that's for sure, and he was fairly "popular" but it didn't seem like he was making any money at all. Probably 95% or more of his followers were either bots, who are starting to be more and more annoying every day, or simply people who followed him at some point in the past, hoping to get some rewards, and when they saw that it won't happen, they just stopped paying attention to the man's "work".
It's sad, but it's the truth. Most people on this website are here for the "reciprocity" side of things. They are commenting and upvoting as long as you are doing the same for them. If you're not, or if you don't have enough money, then you're useless.
There are, of course, exceptions, people who actually take the time to read your work, people who comment, people who resteem, people who do something to show you that they are there. But besides them, besides those exceptions, the website is full of "strangers" looking for money and nothing else.
I'm curious to see what's gonna happen in the future with Steemit if this will keep going. I'm curious to see if more people will join, or if a bunch of people will leave. I'm also curious to see what will happen if I'll start investing money into Steem Power. Will more people suddenly start commenting and interacting? Will more people upvote and resteem what I make hoping to get something in return? Or will I see the same people I saw for a long time now?
I guess there's no way for me to know, and the only thing I can do is to wait and see. But before I end this article, I want to thank everyone who keeps interacting with content despite not getting heavily rewarded for it, and for being there for content creators to acknowledge their work. I'm sure you are appreciated by a big part of the community, me included.
