Beyond the Follower Count: Why Chasing Numbers is a Trap for Photographers

I’ll admit it. When I first dipped my toes into the murky waters of social media, I thought I’d cracked the code to photographic success: post an image, collect a flurry of likes, bask in the warm glow of validation, and before long watch the followers stack up like bricks in a wall.

Well that’s how it works, isn’t it?

More followers = more visibility = more opportunities = happiness and creative fulfilment.

Except, of course, it doesn’t work like that.

What it does produce is a strange, hollow game of numbers. You post something you’re proud of, something you spent hours capturing, editing, shaping into a finished piece and it’s reduced to a passing flicker on someone’s feed. A fraction of a second’s glance, maybe a tap of a thumb, and then on they scroll.

And if you really want to feel the futility of it all, let me introduce you to one of social media’s more depressing rituals: the “follow/unfollow” trick.

The Follow/Unfollow Circus

Here’s how it goes. Someone follows you, and being a normal person, happy to reciprocate, you follow them back. And then, like clockwork, they vanish. They’ve unfollowed you.

Why?

So their numbers look good.

They want to appear popular while keeping their “following” list pristinely empty, as though it’s beneath them to acknowledge other people exist.

What’s truly galling is that these aren’t teenagers chasing clout, they’re often adults, people old enough to know better. Grown men and women carefully curating a public illusion of popularity, one petty unfollow at a time.

I don’t know about you, but when I first realised this was a “thing,” I felt like I’d stumbled into some absurd parody of human interaction. And yet, it’s everywhere.

I was genuinely disappointed the first time this happened - not because I’d been unfollowed (let’s face it, I’ve survived far greater rejections), but because of who was doing it. A fellow photographer, somewhere in his fifties. A contemporary of mine (though clearly waaaay older, I should add), and worst of all - a fellow biker.

A grown man behaving like a 12-year-old is so... disappointing.

This is the heart of why so many people grow weary of social media: it’s anything but social. Instead of genuine connection, it reduces interaction to a hollow game of one-upmanship, where the goal isn’t to share or connect but to collect. Competitive social media, of the kind Instagram seems to thrive on, isn’t good for the soul. Not for me, not for you, and not for anyone who values real human interaction and connection over… a follower count.

The Trap for Photographers

So what does this mean for us as photographers? Well, if you’re not careful, it means your creative decisions start getting shaped by the algorithm rather than your own curiosity. You begin to second-guess your work: Will this get enough likes? Should I post something safer, more ‘shareable’? Before long, you’re not chasing ideas - you’re chasing attention.

That’s the real danger here. It’s not that people unfollow you (who cares?). It’s that, somewhere along the way, you stop following yourself. You forget the reason you picked up a camera in the first place.

Photography becomes less about exploration and more about performance. Instead of pushing boundaries, you stick to what you think will “do well.” Instead of building long-term projects, you hunt for the next quick hit. And in doing so, you handcuff your own growth.

The World Beyond the Screen

Here’s the thing: the world is bigger than social media. Much bigger. There are exhibitions, photo books, print fairs, collaborations, conversations in cafes with other artists - spaces where your work can actually live and breathe, not just flash by in a feed and vanish into digital dust.

The photographs that matter most rarely explode on Instagram. They’re often the quiet ones, the ones that need time, context, and care to reveal themselves. A series hung on a gallery wall. A sequence in a book that invites the reader to slow down and linger. A project that evolves over years, not days.

Social media isn’t designed for any of that. It’s designed to keep you scrolling, not growing.

Why Numbers Don’t Matter

A thousand disengaged followers are worth less than ten people who genuinely connect with your work. One good conversation about your photographs is more valuable than a hundred hollow likes. A single print hanging in someone’s home outlives every story post you’ll ever make.

When you stop measuring your success in followers, you free yourself to chase something more important: depth. Depth in your projects, depth in your practice, depth in your own way of seeing. That’s the stuff that endures.

The Lesson Learned

So, what’s the point of all this? It’s simple: chasing followers is a dead end. It’s a trap that shrinks your creative world instead of expanding it. The sooner you stop caring about the numbers, the sooner you can start caring about the work itself.

That doesn’t mean deleting your accounts or disappearing entirely (though some days that does sound tempting). It just means recognising social media for what it is: a tool, not a truth. A way to share, not a measure of worth.

As for the “follow/unfollow” brigade? Let them get on with it. If curating the illusion of popularity is how they choose to spend their time, that’s their problem. You’ve got better things to do. There are photographs waiting to be taken, images that won’t care about likes, or follower counts, or who clicked “unfollow” last night.

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll find the greatest freedom of all: making work that doesn’t need the algorithm’s approval to matter.

Anyway rant over. Can't stand here chatting all day - Got to get my latest image posted to my feed!