Again, I should have to engage in the whole "follow for follow" instagram mentality just to get support from people who followed me.

Nope. The complete opposite :-) Engagement isn't made through clicking the follow button, it's made through conversations like the one we're having right now :-)

This is still a social network and the reward is just an incentive to light up interaction. So my theory is that engagement is the ultimate key to success in a tokenized social environment.