Fair point regarding retweeting. It's not necessarily bad. In fact, it allows other people to discover accounts you appreciate. However, it also makes it more difficult for someone visiting your profile to judge whether it's wort it to follow you.

Regarding your second point, I may just have 1700 followers, but I do have quite a lot of engagement: https://imgur.com/0oLirZP.

Additionally, followers don't really matter. Engagement does. You can have 1M followers, but if there is no one answering your tweets to put them in perspective, share ideas,... or liking or retweeting them, there is no point.