Yep. People use social media for different purposes. Most simply consume to fulfill some need - not to be bored, laugh, have fun, learn, stay up on latest news… and some seek to monetize by providing content to fulfill those needs.

It’s a funnel. Followers > subscribers > free users > paid users.

For creators, it’s important to be able to get views on their content and since not all content resonates with everyone, they need more followers to get a sufficient number of engagement on things that does resonate.

From there they hope to capture some of those views into more of their attention diverted to more content and hopefully converted to a sale of whatever they may sell. Some people just do it to build a strong network to increase their “luck” surface to land business deals, jobs, whatever…