got my Parler badge

So I'm now a verified user on Parler. I got my badge. For some reason this pleases me. It's not difficult for regular users like myself to get verified on Parler. The process is straightforward.

the dysfunctional culture of the blue checkmark

Regular user verification is a good feature with Parler. Back on twitter there was a "blue checkmark" culture. This is elitist and ultimately toxic.

Everything seemed to revolve around the blue checkmark people and their posts. A distinct vibe that only the blue checkmarks really mattered, blue checkmark opinion was more important, only blue checkmarks are worth following. The blue checkmarks were of course presented as prominent, and some fraction of them I'd heard of in real life. Over the years the percentage of twitter blue checks whose names I recognized in real life declined.

followers and following

I'm up to 80 followers now on Parler, 11 days after joining. I am happy with that, find it pretty good. In 9 years on twitter I had 80 followers. Parler is a better site, friendlier and more outgoing, and no blue checkmark culture. There seems to be more of a followback convention there. Many people I'm following followed me first. I generally follow back.

Overall I follow a few more people than follow me. Mathematically this is how it should be. It was a twitter culture thing that it was somehow bad to be following more than follow you. twitter followers were often low quality: scammers, adult clickbait, spam, bots, business promotion.

In general, I'm pretty sure Parler and twitter followers are governed by Price's Law. That is, the square root of Parler accounts have garnered half of the followers. It's just the way it is. These are the big accounts with many thousands, or millions, of followers. These prominent accounts are unbalanced, with far more followers than they follow.

Now overall "following" and "followed by" have to balance out. The total of followed and followed by across the site is of course the same. So the natural result for us regular folks is then to be following a few more people than we are followed by.