yeah i also am surprised that people use the follow feature for my work even tho i dont run a popular oss project.
well idk what "github influencer" even means but fwiw i am not "people living just from github". ive never taken a dime of github sponsor money. as far as github is concerned i just put my stuff up for free and the github stars program gets me an early look into new features so i can give them feedback. (eg i helped with Hey GitHub before the big launch at GH Universe).
obviously i'll happily ambassador github to anyone who will listen but who isnt already on github here