[auggierose]

From a theoretical point of view, that is not a problem. Given a population of Y people, each of which are following X other people, you can get X as high as Y-1. Fan bases are not mutually exclusive, just like I can shop both at place A and B and sell stuff at my own store C.

[danbruc]

Sure, everyone can follow everyone, 8 billion people can each have 8 billion followers, but that also means that everyone can spend about 4 milliseconds per year on each one they are following. What really matters is the time and money you are spending and that is essentially a fixed amount which you can split into a few larger or many smaller contributions. If there are many evenly spread small contributions, then no one can make a living on that, if there are a few big and concentrated contributions, then only a few can make a living.

[theK]

Yeah but the size of those fan bases does have some practical upper bounds. Usually accounts follow a set of x people where x is in the hundreds whereas creators need to get to Y followers where Y is typically measured in a size orders of magnitude bigger than x. So you have a, practical, hard asymetry

[nlitened]

But you can’t reasonably shop at Y shops.