There is no mystery here. It’s all very simple. I have been active here for 8 years now, so I can be considered a Medium veteran. I have seen things, and I know things. 🙂 First of all, contrary to what many believe, Medium is not a social media platform for writers. Sounds odd? Well, here’s the thing. Medium was created to democratise media and writing, but for that to be useful it cannot be just writers writing for other writers. That’s not sustainable. In fact what Medium would like to see is exponentially more readers than writers. That’s good both for writers and Medium. Users who never wrote a single word on here, are simply readers, and the likelihood is they have been here for years. Some like following many writers, and many of them will follow them back out of courtesy. Do that for a couple of years, and you have 2K followers without ever having written a thing! You can read more about my 8 years on Medium, here: https://attilavago.medium.com/a-girl-broke-up-with-me-because-of-medium-8e3d4984c9b2