mm, i try not to!! these sorts of things aren't very reliable as a means to measure yourself to start with, but twitter has sort of become notoriously unreliable in terms of exposure/metrics.

as far as i know, my stuff is a little less popular than it once was purely in terms of people hitting buttons, in spite of an ostensibly larger reach in terms of followers. i try not to think about it too much beyond that, mostly to avoid placing completely arbitrary significance on the way these things make it or don't. it's really easy to fall into a pit mentally and start comparing the things you make to lower effort posts with high engagement. fortunately, i do what i do for reasons that are not likes!! if you put me at a fork in the road where one sign reads "people pleasing behavior" and the other is marked "sincere self-expression" i'd like to think that i would make the right choice every time >>

to avoid trying to sound Too cool about this: there was definitely a period in the first thousand dolls or so when i would sulk a bit if something i was Very proud of got nearly ignored, but these days... i dunno. it's not uncommon for a piece of fiction i consider to be some of my best work to take several days to pick up 20/30 likes, and any weird comparative thinking after you end up with 37 discrete instances of encouragement seems a bit much. i'm stoked to reach 37 people with one of my strange little stories!!