In this video I joke about coming back to social media after years away and finding that even your eyes seem to need a second opinion.
You see an attractive person on a profile, then scroll down to check how many followers they have. Suddenly the number gets involved in how you see the situation. The caption, roughly, is that sometimes you cannot even trust your own eyes.
It is a comic observation about the rules we appear to have invented online. I even finish with the familiar calls to like, share and follow. I am inside the joke too.
The number arrives before the person
What interests me is the little change in attention: first there is a face, then a counter, then a story you start telling yourself about the person.
A follower count is easy to notice. Kindness, patience, humour and the ability to listen take more time to encounter. I do not want the quickest thing to read on a screen to become the most important thing I think I know about someone.
That is my judgement, not a claim that everyone uses social media this way. The clip does not measure dating behaviour or establish how anyone’s relationships turn out.
Curiosity is more useful than a ranking
I would rather ask what draws me to a person’s words, interests or way of treating others. If there is a conversation, does it feel mutual? Do we understand each other? Is there something beyond the profile that we actually enjoy sharing?
None of those questions can be answered by multiplying or dividing a follower count. A much larger audience does not mean a person is worth more, or that I know whether we would get along.
This is not a rule about whom to contact, and nobody owes a stranger attention. It is a reminder to keep my own confidence and curiosity separate from a public counter.
Keep the joke, leave room for the human
The funny part is recognising how quickly a screen can make us start comparing. I do not need to turn that recognition into another ranking system or a complaint about people who happen to have a large following.
In the article about posting without depending on reactions, I return to the question of what I want to say before asking how it will be received. Here the question is who I am seeing before asking how many other people follow them.
A profile can begin an introduction. I would like to leave enough room for the actual person to arrive.
Sources and calculation notes
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This is a personal reflection on the original humorous clip. It does not present a survey, a causal claim about social media, or a verified account of a particular dating interaction.
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The diagram separates kinds of information; it does not grade profiles or infer anyone’s personality from an image or audience size.
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Original video and thumbnail: Eduard Luta on TikTok. Published 2026-06-23. Research checked 27 September 2026.