followers are a currency of amplification that snowballs until what’s being amplified loses meaning
having a certain number of followers gradually has the effect of being like a microphone that’s always on
anything is oracular
the value of retweets is contextual–a celebrity tweeting a generic , unoriginal homily will easily pick up 5000 RTs, but those RTs have little value to me. compare to someone with 100 followers getting 3 retweets about a story they wrote. those retweets are deep and meaningful: they mean someone read your story, that someone has positive thoughts about you and/or your work, and so on.
retweets and favs are most meaningful before a certain number (perhaps following a bell curve), at which point they slope off and become mob noise, the surging impetus of an impersonal wave.