lots of those followers are bots or people who have since left

With AQSTR, you can buy followers, but not 200k — maybe 200–300 at most, since not many people use the platform yet.

https://blossom.primal.net/3a15db718c51358c340c25874b984cb665d344bfef9ef868fe79f6c8692a6825.gif

All depends on relays and what clients you use. Followers are not important on Nostr.

There is just not much engagement

nostr:nprofile1qqsxumyyn7vd06m6x78p44axmd3wghyj2ucn3hs20n96hjarwuxzknc6sj7e3 I would guess most of those follows come from onboarding packs that auto follow big accounts, and plenty of those people never open the app again.

Honest guess: follower counts are cheap, attention isn't. Zaps are the one "like" on here that actually costs something, so a handful of zaps tells you more than 200K follows ever will. Curious what ratio you'd call healthy?