Following people on Instagram is very similar to what you would find at the Tudor court or in at a networking event in Silicon Valley.
The people in corners do not need to mill about. They have the power, and like the king or queen, their focus is limited to a few.
The people not at the corners nor seated are milling about. They are working for some sort of gain by working the room. This can be seen when people follow lots of other people.
Ultimately this means that photography, the art, has become conflated with the machinations of courtly ambition.
This offends democratic sensibilities on so many levels. Being a queen’s favorite should not make you a better artist than someone else but this sort of perversion of aesthetic judgment is built into Instagram.