Member-only story
Please don’t follow me just because I follow you
Follow-for-follow is a waste of everyone’s time
Recently, I read a Medium story that posits that authors who have more followers than people they follow are narcissists.
I’m not sure whether narcissist here is meant in the Greek mythological sense or in the way that armchair psychiatrists refer to the Duchess of Sussex, but the main thrust of the argument is this: authors should maintain an exact equilibrium between their number of followers and people they follow at all times.
Because if someone follows you, it’s only polite to follow them back, right? Wrong.
Please don’t follow me just because I follow you. Either you get my work clogging up your feed despite having no interest in it and it wastes your time, or you mute me so you never have to read my articles and it wastes my time. It’s a lose/lose situation.
I’m not saying never follow anyone back. I’m grateful for every person who follows me and reads, claps for and responds to my stories. But please only do it…
