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The tactic is simple – follow someone. Wait for them to follow you back. Immediately unfollow them.

The result? You are at best a douche, and at worst a stealth-spammer.

There are plenty of reasons to unfollow someone – you don’t like their content, they haven’t updated in ages, they are actually a spammer. Hell, even unfollowing someone because they didn’t follow you back is understandable – Twitter is a communications medium after all, and works best when communication goes both ways.

But, unfollowing someone simply to amass a significant number of followers speaks volumes about a fragile ego which needs a high follower to friend ratio to somehow feel validated.