I like the term friends or stranger 😂 instead of follower but it is what it is.
I also had this epiphany after checking out youtube where it appears every content creator treats everyone that sees/subscribe them not as equal. It's strange because they're making money because these people that subscribed and checks out their content. Treating them in that type of dynamic is fairly odd to me. I guess some of these people have that star syndrome.
YouTube is a completely different beast... Those "influencers" are mostly ruthless and after they get very "powerful" you can notice how they lose connection with the real world (I followed some from their early days and you can notice the difference easily)... Nothing is more important than numbers going up and money going up... Those "crypto traders" are my favorites... In one video they say BTC goes up, in the other one they say go down... After a week, they pull out one of those two and say "I PREDICTED IT!" 😂
Income from trading 0, income from YT ads, and shilling paid sponsorship tokens 100%! Followers are served to be sheep who swallow all the words and promises, and lose money...