Nuki News #54 - Follower Count!

I’m writing this post just as I near 3,000 watchers on FurAffinity(2949 as of writing) and broke through five thousand followers on Twitter at the start of May. It’s pretty cool, but, realistically, it’s not something I can truly fathom. Having that many people deciding to follow me for my work, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s incredible, but I’m here to say follower count doesn’t matter.

Sort of.

The short end of it, the only provable thing a watcher/follower count represents is that number of accounts being used by someone behind a screen clicked on the ‘follow/+watch’ button. It could be the same person on multiple accounts, it could be a bot, or someone who will go inactive on their account shortly after. Or someone following you simply because you followed them. Or, they followed you expecting certain kinds of content from you that you just don’t happen to make afterward.

Someone clicking that button may never interact with your posts or art. They may not click the like/favorite button, retweet or comment. From my experience, at any given time, just over 5% of my followers ever interact with my art or posts in some regard. And of those, only a literal handful comment on my posts! (Not saying that is a bad thing or ‘woe-is-me’ mind you, just trying to give a realistic perspective on what these numbers mean)

I bring this up as a splash of cold water because I think all of us, whether you’re an artist or not, have once upon a time cared a bit -too- much about follower/watcher counts. I’ll admit, it is most likely easier for me to say this now than back when I had less than 250 followers. I definitely had my share of “why does THIS person have X followers in a shorter time than I did??” or worse “my work is better than so-and-so’s, and I post more frequently, what gives?” and the very poor mindset of “why didn’t X person retweet or comment on my post??/Why haven’t they followed me yet?”

At the time it felt like these things mattered, but in the long run and looking back, they never did. Ever. But I get why we fall into that mindset early on-  we want validation, we want people to like us and the things we say, do or think. When I reached my first 1,000 followers, it finally hit me that none of it actually mattered as much as I thought it did. This number I looked at for validation and for a dopamine fix to see increase over time was just driving me up the wrong path.

For a while after, I still tried to justify that as an ‘art business’ a follower count is still important- knowing more people are enjoying my work could mean more people will want to pay for it, in theory. I used to even have follower count goals, too. “By the end of this year i want to have XXXX amount of followers!” But, back at the end of 2020 I reflected on this, and find this sort of metric doesn’t serve anything. There are cheap ways of gaining followers, so having that as a point of focus(even if I was wise enough to not employ cheap tactics to increase a number) would subconsciously lead me down the wrong path. I’d rather make art that I enjoy and do things that matter to me to gain a following of people who like what I like or believe what I believe.

OK mister Artie-5k-followers-Nuki, if follower count magically doesn’t matter, what does? Well, that’s for each person to decide. This year I replaced the follower count metric with something that *does* matter a lot to me- heartfelt comments! People who say something genuine about me or my work, I record in a document file. I write down their name and what they said. This is a double whammy of good- for one, it’s a nice document that can lift my spirits when I am down and feel my self-worth take a hit. For two, it subconsciously will encourage me to do or make things that are worth commenting on. Something people can connect to or enjoy and want to let me know they enjoy it and want more.

Granted, I don’t have a science formula for ‘how to encourage more people to leave meaningful comments’ - so it makes it challenging. Also, I have to define ‘what is a heartfelt comment?’ For me, I stuck with ‘a comment from someone about my art or person, that shows my efforts are witnessed and stirred a warm feeling for them.’ It’s a harder task to accomplish, but each time I get one, I know for sure I'm on the right path. Because someone who shares their thoughts like that, often do end up interacting with my posts more frequently, and commissions work from me too. On top of that, I am still gaining followers- I started the year at 4k, and in just four months got to 5k. Focusing on doing work that gets heartfelt interactions has given me more of a following much more quickly as a byproduct. People are more likely to follow you when they get a sense of why you do what you do, as opposed to just following you for what you do. Not saying it can’t happen, but any time I followed someone because I just wanted to see more of a particular thing and not because I knew what they’re about, I ended unfollowing them because I didn’t care for what they were about, even if from time to time they drew a really appealing fat character. I’m sure you’ve done the same!

So in short, follower/watcher count is a very flawed metric, that focusing on that alone will just end up with you having a worse-off mindset, and risk feeling bitter or jealous of others. I’ve seen multiple art peers say “the fur community feels like a popularity contest” when it really isn’t. No one is winning awards for having the follower count number go up. But your focus on something like these vanity metrics should be examined because it can lead you to poisoning your own perception of this wonderful community. Make things worth your while, be consistent about it, connect with people, and the rest will follow. Follower count isn’t going to make you feel good in the long term anyway- I’ve seen artists with 5 times my following openly tweet and complain that they don’t feel a connection to the community and even though they get hundreds of retweets or thousands of likes, they get NO comments. What a hell that would be for me to experience- people clearly like the work, but don’t say anything about it...I wouldn’t want that for myself.

Oops, this turned into a ramble, but I’ll cut it off here. What do you think? What have been your experiences with follower counts?