It doesn’t matter whether I agree with your methods or not, I’m stating my opinion. At no point in my article did I cast aspersions on the quality of your work. Your writing itself has nothing to do with the point I’m making, so I’m not sure why you’re mentioning your earnings/curation rate. And also, can you really say you’ve been on Medium two weeks, when in the same breath you admit to already having 346 followers on this account?

Do I disagree with mass following? Absolutely. Because no matter how generous you are with clapping, there are not enough hours in the day for you to engage with all the people you follow. For those that you do engage with, brilliant. But for every one writer that you engage with, there are ten more that you don’t. So for those that you don’t engage with, the purpose of following them is purely in the hope they’ll follow back, regardless of whether or not you want to read their content/they want to read yours.

Of course, having more followers will result in more views and claps, but as you follow more and more people, the percentage of your followers who read and engage with your work will go down. As you say, for every 125 people you follow, 15–20 will follow back. They follow back, out of obligation, potentially never having seen a single piece of your work, or not having any interest in the topics you write about.

Followers mean you get eyeballs on your work, but if they’ve only followed you for the sake of it, they won’t read your content. When earnings are based upon reader engagement, how does having a large number of followers help, when a portion of them probably have no interest in reading your work?