I honestly don't know that I want 1K+ followers btw. That's kinda spooky to me. I try to frame it like "well that's useful for my mission to nudge the world in the right direction," but it's still more uncomfortable than validating! It definitely affects how you have to think about your privacy in ways that grate on me, even if a lot of people expect it's a great problem to have. Different priorities for sure.

If there's any explanation for that number, I think it's this, and maybe somebody else can make better use of this than I can: I think it demonstrates a market demand for someone who "tells it like it is" in a sense that's about well-intentioned and humanist sincerity, instead of the self-confident jackassery that Bill Maher or such would mean by that.