200 Followers: That's a Lot of People · 9:04pm Sep 15th, 2016
It is. It really, really is.
I mean, you don't really think about it, do you? We spend so long clicking in and out of stuff where we can see that people have thousands, millions of followers and subscribers, and suddenly a million becomes the new benchmark of excellence. Some channels, you won't even look at them if they've got under a thousand subscribers. Because it all just becomes a number.
But then, you step back and think about it in terms of people. And that's where 'small' numbers like 200 really start to hit home.
Look around you. Odds are, you're currently in a small room. If you aren't, think about your bedroom. How many people do you think you could fit in there, if you took out all of your furniture and somehow convinced everyone to lie perfectly flat on top of each other? If you've got an awesome bedroom, maybe 100, if they're all really comfortable with close personal contact. Of course, that's such a generous estimate that I'm pretty sure I've just proven that I have no sense of scale, so let's move on.
How many friends do you have? And I don't just mean how many people do you follow that also follow you, I mean your friends. The people you know the names of at a glance, the people whose faces and thought processes stick in your memory. How many of those do you have?
Well, depending on how social you are or how much dedication we feel is required to qualify someone as a friend, you probably have somewhere between fifty and a hundred friends that are really your friends. Are those the normal human numbers? I don't know, and for the purposes of this discussion, these numbers are fine. It seems to be the average among most of my social circles.
The point I'm trying to arrive at is, 200 is a big number. You probably don't have a serious emotional connection with a grand total of 200 people, to the point where you can recognize each of them by voice alone. And before you start ranting about how I obviously wrote this post to brag about how awesome I am at social skills (haha), I don't have that connection either. Most of you barely know me. You might, in a pinch, be able to recognize my writing style if it were contrasted against someone else. But less than twenty of you actually know me in any personal way.
And there's nothing wrong with that. I don't expect you to know or care what I'm really like, or even to enjoy my stuff. I'm probably just a very vague picture in your head, and that's perfectly fine.
But all of you are also vague pictures in my head, and I'm not fine with that.
You see, sometimes someone unfollows me. And despite everything I'm about to say, that's fine. There's plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons to unfollow. But every time I see that number go down, I worry. I ask myself if I did something wrong, or if the wrong thing I did was doing nothing. Did that person disappear because they had some beef with me, or did they just decide their tastes had changed? Could I have stopped them? Would I have wanted to stop them?
That's usually when I start scrolling through my followers. I look for what isn't there, a task as maddening as it is saddening. I check to make sure the names I recognize are still there, and that's when I curse myself. Because every time I check if Big-Name-this and Sometimes-Talks-To-Me-that are still among my followers, I can't help but tell myself that that's incredibly shallow. Even though the human mind has limited space, and most of you will never be more than a username in flux to me, I end up blaming myself for not knowing who left. I despise myself for not having memorized every name, every avatar, and updating that list whenever either one changes. And I wish I could track them down.
Not out of malice. Not out of some misplaced idea that I can woo them back. Purely out of the desire to ask them why they left, and if I could have changed anything. Because I still feel as though it's my fault at the end of the day, because all that mysterious unfollower adds up to in my mind is -1. And that just doesn't feel human.
You matter to me, guys. I want you to know that. Even if I don't know your name, even if I don't realize that it's you who's just up and left one day, you matter to me. I thank you all for sticking with me all this time, and I even thank the new guys who probably weren't expecting all this heavy shit out of the blue. Do you know why?
Because you convince me that I matter. You guys, just by being here, tell me that I do have talent. I do have worth. People want to read what I write, and there's been so many times when I really need to be reminded of that. So thank you. ALL of you.
I may not know you. But I owe a lot to you. More than you know.
Yes, more than that, too.
Okay, I need to chill. Play me off, Young!
I feel like I'm going to regret baring my soul like this.
4211237 No, I don't think you will. It's okay to bare your soul if feel like needing to. Hell, I've had to do it at times this past week at least three times.
Congratulations. While Fimfiction doesn't command the same orders of magnitude as a YouTube or a Facebook, it's can still be staggering to think about how you could make a decently sized village out of your followers. Here's to many more, and may few if any of them leave you.
Just unfollowed you. Reason: Extremely inactive, and I don't know anything about you.
Estimated number of people I could fit in my room without furniture: 82
Number of friends I have: 3
Your next story's going to be about Twilight and Cadance being pissed that they aren't immortal like Celestia and Luna. They go on a road-trip to discover the lost Trough of Youth, having all sorts of crazy adventures along the way.
4211243 Best of luck in all of your future endeavors.
4211254 ...
No. Not even slightly.
4211273 Thank you, I hope you lead a great life and enjoy it.
I follow you because you make me think, and seldom few authors can do that. To remember me, just remember I'm a cat in this equine infested place :V
4211332 You also have a fairly distinctive name.
Congrats homes! Keep it up!
Aaand here I am showing up several hours late, as per semi usual. Anyway, I think it's sweet you care that much. It may or may not be a good thing, but I depend on my own friends to remind me why I exist quite a bit myself. Funny part is, they don't even know. Who knows, maybe life will work it's weird stuff and we somehow end up meeting in person. I would be perfectly okay with that.
Well, I'm not going to lie. I sorta forgot I followed you... But I do remember why I did. I liked your work. I liked how you wrote something or other and I thought 'You know what? I'll follow this guy, they make good stuff.'
4211337
My name just sorta happened, it's based on an old nickname of mine, minus an X, and the last name was based on the character I attached the first to.
Thank you for sharing and congrats on the milestone. I may just appear to be a username you only vaguely recognise (but I don’t mind that), and I may only know you by the stories and blog posts you write, but I know for certain that you’re an excellent author and person and that your 200 followers are 200 well deserved.
4211241 I suppose a smaller site like Fimfiction means that the same number of followers matters more here as opposed to other platforms like the ones you mentioned. It feels a bit more like a community here.
4212954 Actually, you're one of the ones I recognize. You're bubbly, chipper, and don't always know what I'm talking about, but you're a good sport about it and you once wished death upon someone who had disliked one of my stories.
4212967 Heh, I did say that, didn’t I? Looks like I’m a bit more memorable than I thought.
Congrats on the milestone champ. I can definitely understand that feeling, when you more often than not just like being in control/knowing what's going on around you and then suddenly something just seems off. Without any actual knowledge as to why it drives you made trying to figure out what you did or didn't do.
I still remember why I followed you, it was due to a rather hilarious spat you were having with another one of the resident comment warriors I'm starting to notice pop up more and more at certain stories. After checking your name I saw a good number of your stories I actually had on a bookshelf and I figured I may as well follow to see what else I can dig up.
4213065 The best spats are the ones that you win, and people approve of you winning.
Which one was this? I do a lot of those.
4213075 This particular one was between you and someone you seem to butt heads with quite a bit. It was over GaPJaxie's actingverse and the validity of them all being separate stories, on top of how weak each story was becoming as they continued with the poor character development and lack of depth aside from the sandwich boards they were wearing that expressed their singular direction of conversation.
Then if I remember the names correctly you were clashing once again with the same person in one of the Negotianverse stories but that one is a bit vague in my head.
I have alotta time on my hands since I work at an hotel alone so I surf fimfiction. And some of those spats are comical but sad at the same time due to some of the arguments.
4213100 I just enjoy spreading my opinion around with a huge shovel.
At least I don't annoy you all with blogs about my thoughts on various stories that I don't feel should be in the feature box.
Following you now because you care. You write good too, but this post right here is what made me push that button. So, thanks for caring.
4213117 It's the least I can do for people who validate the only serious desire I have in life.
4213113 Tee hee. Why I've got no idea who you're talking about. But then I suppose that's why it's also known as the "Who gives a sh**" box
Aaaand you picked Jonathan Young.
4213384 Yes, I did. Because I like him.
And if you don't like him, that's perfectly fine. You're entirely within your right to prefer certain artists to others.
4213403 Hmm? I bought most of his albums on iTunes with my hard earned cash. If I disliked him, that would be an odd way of showing it. xD
4213507 Look at the way you typed out that previous comment. I literally could not tell, from the phrasing, if you viewed him in a negative or positive light.
Sorry for going on the defensive.
4213514 No need to apologize. I was the one being ambiguous about something you clearly enjoy.
4213589 In other news, I now know a thing about you: You like Jonathan Young.
4213592 It's certainly within the realm of possibility, yes.