I saw that you only follow 9 accounts.

How many people one follows should have nothing do with how much they are followed in return. Why do I only have 9 followers, how do I build the community around me? Simple, I follow people I want to follow, not just follow for the sake of following. Hence I only follow 9 people right now, and I am engaging with a majority of their post. My ratio is actually pretty standard compared to those that have 5k+ and follow about 400 people.

With selfish I was referring to self-voting. Yours is at 6.45%.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with self-voting, and it is a reward for gaining higher vote value. This shows you have built something, and should be able to reward yourself; the hard work has paid off. I'm voting period. If I wasn't voting at all, I would say you have a point.

Maybe those 250 followers will engage more with you if you also engage more with them.

Again, I should have to engage in the whole "follow for follow" instagram mentality just to get support from people who followed me. I think that is disingenuous. If people only followed me to get a follow back, sorry... unfollow me then. Just because you liked my content and followed, doesn't mean I have to follow you regardless of what content you are making.

That's at least how I perceived it in the very beginning.

Right, and this is what I brought up earlier and I will say again.
If you remade an account now, it would be 100x harder to gain traction. Steemit was smaller, had a better mindset, and so on... What helped you gain a following in the beginning, would not work now, or it would be a huge tedious grind just like any other social media. If that weren't the case, no one would use voting bots to help gain traction.

Nice convo though. Cheers.