GitHub's Fake Star Economy
awesomeagents.aiDo people actually give a shit about GitHub stars?
I've got lots of projects on GitHub and I don't think any of them have more than like five stars, and it has never been something that bothered me. I put the code out there, if people want to use it then that's fine, if they don't want to use it that's also fine.
I didn't think that having lots of stars actually translated to money in any meaningful way.
People are definitely desperate to show traction. Especially for a fledgling project pre-revenue. Maybe this was rhetorical, but I think the answer is yes, people do care when you use the stars to try put together some story about how great your project is and how much people love it.
It wasn't rhetorical; I genuinely did not realize anyone cared about stars.