How come some people gain followers so fast?

I really don't think this is something you need to focus on. First of all, those people may be buying followers. Secondly, followers aren't everything. Genuine engagement is what really matters. Focus on your own account instead of comparing your follower count to someone else's.

It’s almost always just bots, Going from 1k to 22k in a matter of days without a massive viral reel or a huge shoutout is impossible with the current algorithm.

As a growth strategist, I would not look at follower growth in isolation.

A few things could be happening here.

Some people are not growing from their feed. They may be getting traffic from other places like WhatsApp groups, college networks, dating apps, influencer circles, paid shoutouts, collaborations, meme pages, or one viral piece of content that you may not even see now.

Also, some accounts do have a niche, but it is not always a content niche. For many lifestyle creators, the niche is the person. Their look, social life, aesthetic, city, personality, or aspirational identity becomes the reason people follow.

That said, sudden jumps from 1k to 11k to 22k with very little content can also be suspicious. It could be paid followers, giveaway traffic, shoutout loops, or engagement groups. The real test is not the follower count. It is their story views, comments, saves, shares, and whether people actually care when they post.

Fast growth can come from luck, looks, strategy, network, or paid tactics. But sustainable growth usually comes from one thing: people having a clear reason to keep coming back.

Someone very specific came to mind as I read this. I know of one artists who went from ~1.5k to about 17k whithin a few months. She doesn’t post provocative content (explicit nor rage bait) not much music out either. I respect her hustle because she’s been grinding for a minute but it did seem out of the blue with nothing much having changed as far as her approach to it but she’s genuinely a kind person and I’m glad she’s getting the support she is

Lonely man epidemics and those girls know how to exploit it

Those jumps (1k → 11k → 22.9k with barely any posting) are almost never organic. That pattern usually means one of three things —

1. Follower bot/growth service (cheap ones literally drip-feed fake followers over a few days to look "natural")
2. Giveaway/contest pod — "follow to win" loops where thousands follow temporarily, a chunk stays
3. Bought followers in bulk from a panel, sometimes layered in batches to avoid an obvious overnight spike The giveaway is the engagement rate. Real growth at that pace would come with proportional likes/comments/saves — if someone's at 20k+ with near-zero engagement on photos, that's the tell.

I’ve been using trial reels and you cannot see them from my page. You actually cannot find them at all unless you happen to come across them on the for you page. However, I’ve gained a lot of followers from them in the last few days. I mean a lot for me is like 40. But still but some of the post have like 100 or like 500 shares or 1000 likes or or one of the post has 50,000 views which has never happened to me before but still anytime those are in my trial reels account area you cannot see them on my page so you wouldn’t know that that’s where people came from. So while I do think it’s likely someone would be buying bots if they’re getting thousands if they’re just slowly gaining like 100 or something every day then I would say it could be from hard-core trial like reels use potentially???

Bots

i honestly think it’s bots,,, it’s not that hard to buy likes/followers for accounts

I have seen that phone bot farms do the job . But like almost all wrote that it is always better to go slow and organically for the long run. More interaction means more chances to go bigger organically. So the time will come but we have to be prepared.