I like browsing the recently created tags to clean up the ones that shouldn't exist.
Just now I noticed that that the tag real was created approximately 5 hours ago for this question.
Hovering for more info, I noticed this:
Apparently this silly tag has managed to accrue 22 followers! How could this be? I could only come up with the following possible explanations.
An unusual number of people started following this tag within 5 hours. I really hope this is not the case, and I'll consider it unlikely.
It's some sort of bug. This too seems unlikely.
This tag was created some time ago, got some followers, and then was burninated in some fashion. When it was recreated a few hours ago, any previous followers were automatically made followers again. This feels very StackExchangey, since my understanding is that deleted questions are not really deleted, merely hidden; it's reasonable that this would happen to tags as well.
I feel like I have seen other recently created tags, once or twice, with an unusually large number of followers. Can anyone shed any light on this?
Ironically I'm unsure about what tags, besides tagging, would be appropriate for this question.