this isnt meant to be a moral statement or anything sorry for the mucho texto but
being a person that has been online and lucky enough to start getting relatively big numbers on a lot of different platforms (many kept secret, many now deleted after crumbling under the pressure a little), i think numbers kind of rot your brain
thanks to twitter, we now know that big numbers dont mean anything and they're as untrustworthy as they've ever been
anyone can get huge numbers just by being stealing content, driving outrage, or being a huge dumb asshole. this is one of the easiest and most optimal ways of garnering big numbers and im sure they're happy with the $30 they get for advertising a fleshlight under their banger quote retweet quip or something
likes are arbitrary and not representative of the value of content; it's representative of trends, controversy, or how attention grabbing your thumbnail is
infact it could be inversely proportional - valuable content requires literacy, and the higher the required literacy, the smaller the audience, and the fewer the numbers
so i think numbers are kind of lame
BUT
numbers are now a language of acknowledgement
because of this, for readers that value my content highly, they can mash the "cool" button as much as they like. it's not trustworthy, it's not representative of value, it's just a little toy that gives you a thing to acknowledge that you read something, and in return i get a little seratonin
now, like, 3 people can decide that a post is considered high value
knowing this counter is just a toy completely removes any negative mental health effect that stuff like "likes", "views" or "hitcounts" give you
it can be artificially inflated or ignored, similar to how likes in real metric-driven ecosystems can be artificially inflated. all the more power to you if this is your job, keep making bangers and getting your name out there, but for hobbies this can be so so so so detremental
hobbies are just about staying sane and having something cool to talk about, u gotta constantly fight against the tiktok audience building big number grindset garbage
numbers feel good, but ive been in the pits of getting a thousand or so likes per post and then having multiple flops in a row for things im proud of and pushed myself for. it feels really bad, and becomes an enourmous source of friction in your life. when the novelty of big numbers wears off, the friction hits so much harder than the motivation