Following Mutely

What's up with Twitter?

Has anyone else noticed that getting followers on Twitter is getting more expensive every day?
Every other thing I see is how to gain followers fast, buy followers, automatic tweets and follows and unfollows and promoted tweets and... I just don't know.

Back in my day...

When I first found Twitter, back in mid-2009, everything was so pure and honest. No one "bought followers", you just made friends, connections. If people liked your content, you had lots of followers. If you were just so-so, you didn't have as many.

I see accounts that have thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of followers. How many of those accounts are bots? Do the people with those follower numbers even care? Is their brand or message even reaching real people? Does that eve matter - if you have enough followers to start a small city? These are questions I care about!

I didn't really have anyone on separate lists, beyond maybe really funny people getting their own list, or really scary Tweeps, or pretty or cool, etc. But those were mostly lists that other people followed. Those lists were curated to direct attention to people based on their strengths or personalities.

When I logged in last week, I saw someone had added me to a list. Well, that's nice, I thought! I noticed the list had several thousand members and was followed by maybe 12. I'm extremely grateful, obviously. I love when people interact, however they choose to do so. I began to think about the point of the list. Was it just to organize and collect names? Were people actually seriously interested in whatever the list was for and it was just a small group? I still don't know what I did to earn my place. On Twitter, I even asked "is putting me on a list but not following me" was some sort of commitment phobia. I still don't know. But I care about the answer.

How would you feel if you found out you were Muted or on a list people never checked?

I would think, probably weird right? Shouldn't the goal be to write things that people ultimately want to read? Or at least to find the people who want to read what you write?