Hello Zack,
if I didn't write about ads or how many followers my friends that promoted my post had, well, it's because I did not spend on advertising, and I did not use friends' accounts with k of followers. I just posted the landing page, which was very simple and easy, on my twitter, indie hackers community, and Kernal ideas platform. That's it. I always launched my products in an organic way. Maybe I was lucky as you said, indeed I showed the process I used for reaching these numbers. But I did this not one time, but more than 3 times (same process), and it worked pretty well. That's why I decided to share it here. That's it. Of course, I'm not saying "hey, do this and you'll be successful". I'm showing a process you can use for validating something before building the whole product.
So be careful what you write without knowing beforehand what you are talking about.