If I joined today for example, how would I come across something you posted? The user increment is +1, but that's just the potential number of people you could reach. Somebody would have to the equivalent of re-tweeting, for your content to be visible on their profile, and discoverable by others.
There are a few ways to find my content.
1. Follow me
2. Find my note in a hashtag / interest-based relay or in global chat (global will probably not remain for long as the network grows and it gets too noisy / spammy). You'll have interest based relays / tags, however that gets structured. Right now there are no interest-based relays that I know of (yet).
3. Via a boost (equiv. to retweet).
4. Via some sort of ranker. Some clients rank posts by activity.
In general, you have to follow people to discover content you want to see, but it's not a requirement (as outlined above). I definitely think the Nostr experience for people improves dramatically as they follow a few folks.