They probably have a greater following because they've followed thousands of other people and are looking for follow backs?

I've been told off by a writer for not following back everyone who follows me, and demanded to read his stories, because apparently he'd been reading so many of mine, but I didn't recognise him, so thought I'd been remiss in not recognising him and checking out his work.

I apologised and when I had a bit of time the next day, went onto his timeline, skim-read and responded to 6 stories, no less. But as I scrolled down his feed, it became clear that he'd actually only been on Medium a few weeks, so he couldn't POSSIBLY have been reading all my stories for so long that I'd somehow wronged him by failing to recognise him and reciprocate - which incidentally, I feel people should only do if they want to anyway.

I think it was probably the first one of mine he'd read and he was just dropping into everyone's comments and trying to guilt them into following him. Anyway, I've muted him for now, and if I WANT to check out his stories sometime, I'll do it on my terms.

The whole obligatory reciprocality thing is pathetic. No one makes any money on here if they don't write things that people are interested in. Even my regular readers only tot up to cents in earnings if my stories don't find a wider audience because they're decent stories.

This type of behaviour is out of order.

Here endeth my rant.