you have a point about creating a community, and follow-for-follow coming with issues. But the thing is, it takes time to build a community to really understand others, which comes after reading a few posts by them. So if someone decides to unfollow me tomorrow I will be fine with it since my writing would not have clicked with them. But this requirement for 100 followers by Medium is something that has put everyone in this race to get followers and thus this behaviour.

Since I am new and need followers, I can relate to people asking for followers, but then I am also happy to see that most people are understanding and welcoming, following back to help others.

This sure is a good sign of a good community.

So while I will not say, follow-for-follow but would love to gain followers!

Cheers!