Hit 1,000 followers on my old art account and realized most of them were bots from that one viral post

I spent three years building that account and when I finally hit the big number, only about 200 of those followers actually liked or commented on anything, so what's the point of chasing those milestones anyway?

3 comments

3 Comments

felixlane3d ago

Yeah the "what's the point of chasing those milestones" part really hit home for me. I had a similar thing happen with my writing blog where I got all excited about crossing 500 followers, but then I noticed my engagement was actually dropping because most of those new followers were just ghost accounts or bots that followed from a random tag. What finally worked for me was deleting the number counter off my dashboard and focusing just on the people who actually replied to my posts. Took a while to unlearn that numbers = success mindset but honestly my interactions feel way more real now.

keith2743d ago

Man, did you ever feel like you were just lying to yourself about those numbers before you finally turned off the counter?

jessica9213d ago

Did you ever see that article about how our brains react to those number milestones like they're actual rewards? It's wild how we get hooked on the dopamine hit from seeing a count go up, even when we know deep down those numbers don't mean much. Once you break that habit, doesn't it feel like you can actually see what's real?