I had a very similar moment very early on. When I started and saw a lot of followers coming in, I felt like I had a good start with many people wanting to follow me. Gave me the feeling of people, probably as new as me wanting to support each other as much as possible.

Now, almost six weeks later, I am a bit older and a bit wiser and I know what it actually is. Making a wild estimation, of my close to 400 followers, only every 4-7th users is probably a real and active user. The rest either already quit or is just a bot that is part of some curation chain.