When did having lots of followers lose its inherent appeal? It’s a post-pandemic phenomenon. During the height of COVID, online followings surged as cooped-up people across the planet spent more time looking at screens. TikTok, newly popular in the United States, had a turbocharged algorithmic feed that made it possible to gain millions of followers literally overnight. Instagram has replicated that strategy with Reels, inspiring hordes of new, successful content creators. But as time has passed the attention of audiences has ebbed in intensity. As users have come to rely more on algorithmic recommendations, they have got used to drifting where the feed brings them rather than intentionally seeking out specific accounts. That means it’s easier to optimize content to exploit the algorithm. Grace Clarke, the head of community at a large e-commerce tech company, told me, “Audience-amassing is actually no longer ‘expensive,’ a.k.a. hard or rare. It’s easy to game.” At the same time, users have been drawn to more individualized digital publishing platforms, ranging from YouTube to Patreon, where small and devoted audiences can congregate around creators of their choosing. According to an analysis carried out for the Financial Times, the over-all time spent on traditional social media peaked in 2022 and has declined ever since. The largest platforms, meanwhile, are populated primarily by passive consumers who don’t care enough to unfollow those they’re no longer interested in. When was the last time you pruned your Facebook friends or evaluated your following list on X?