I really agree with you on this follower thing and the followers here do not help at all..accept for self esteem hahaha.
> An account can have a lot of followers that are not active anymore or don't curate their feed ever. An account can have a lot of followers that have barely any stake or influence

I have over 1200 followers and some people envy me! There was tool i used recently and i was shocked when it showed me that i have 64 followers out of the 1200....The 64 are the ones who comment,upvote and reply to my posts.....only 64 out of 1200.

>To this day I have never asked anyone to follow me, I never end my posts with "follow and upvote", etc
I have to agree that am guilty of this above and i am stopping it right way.I always include "upvote and resteem!"....its ended now on my last post.

I now strive to make relationships with influential people as i wrote in my post yesterday.It is the relationships we make that matter...and i hope to meet influential followers along the way!