Vent: my 500th upload got 11 likes and taught me more than my viral one

Everyone in this community acts like a post has to blow up to count, and I flat out disagree. I posted my 500th piece to my gallery last Tuesday, a 4 hour study of a diner parking lot in Toledo, and it got 11 likes and 2 comments. My 12th piece, some quick anime fan art I threw together in 20 minutes, got 4,000 likes and I still hate looking at it. I kept a spreadsheet of every upload for 3 years and my skill clearly jumped between piece 200 and piece 350, but my follower count barely moved the whole time. The likes never tracked the work, they tracked the algorithm and whatever was trending that week. So if you're sitting at 40 posts wondering why nobody sees them, what number are you actually on and what does your own work look like next to piece 1?