@GinnyMcQueen I've been to so many conferences where I've sized others up by their follower count, and I'm just tired of it.

Do you have more followers than me? Then you're a god in need of veneration; I scarcely dare approach you.

Do you have fewer followers than me? Oh, look at the time; I'd really like to chat but I need to go find someone more important to talk to.

I find myself falling into that habit and it sickens me. Burn that shit.

@nolan I worked in social media for 10 years. I know the horror.

@GinnyMcQueen I'm in webdev and I really think it's an unspoken undercurrent in who gets hired, who gets invited to conferences, whose blog posts get featured, etc. I have 7.5k birdsite followers and I am not a fan of this system.

@nolan Follower counts have no actual value to anyone. I have 45,000 fans on FB and can't afford medication to keep me alive so what is the fucking point? :blush:

@nolan @GinnyMcQueen
Over the years on birdsite I've acquired the horrible habit of summit up the quality of someone's feed using a very shallow approach based on follower stats:

* More followers than me?
* Their following > followers?
* egg avatar?

The only added value with this is potentially being able to distinguish bots or trolls from real humans.

In a place where these don't exist though, follower counts are useless and only create bias.

So, yes, burn them, please 🔥!

@kkostov @GinnyMcQueen Yep. Starting to realize I don't like the person I've become on birdsite. 😕

@GinnyMcQueen @nolan Ya know it's wierd. Since joining Mastodon I've never once deliberately looked at my follower counts. It just doesn't seem to matter here. I feel so free here.

But I think hiding that data is too overboard. Sometimes it's useful for some people to see this info. Maybe just find a way to make it less obvious?

@richarddlarson @GinnyMcQueen Maybe, yeah. Maybe it should be available to the user themselves but not publicly? So then you're just taking their word on it.

"Feel so free" is exactly how I feel here. Can't find the exact quote, but I think Kerouac said in the Dharma Bums something like, "I own nothing, therefore I'm the freest man in the world." I have no followers, therefore I am free.