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 My bet is that 99.9% of the world is onboarded via some already active Nostr user OR using a well known client, that so takes the responsability for not exposing only one totally fake network. 
 i'd agree, but go further and say less than 1/1000 users are not going to jump in with at least one legit person to start off with, probably more like 1/10000

and so long as the clients default to networks composed of mostly real people

fake networks and fake relays are in the same category as scams in general, and probably the subject matter of such fake networks would be pump and dump and other kinds of scammy shitcoinery 
 First paragraph is wide of the mark - I didn't know any of you freaks before I spun up my npub :)

And a lot of people I talk to under #introductions be the same.  Sample on convenience etc etc, YMMV, but I'm pretty sure we "walk-ins" are a majority of new npubs.

The rest of your post I agree with. 
 Accurate. I knew no one, only of people talking about it. Everyone I've helped get set up, that I've taken the time to ask, has either watched a video or read an article that piqued their interest.  
 yeah but you found gigi or jeff booth or lyn or something, or someone anyone dropping their npub, i mean, it's pretty unlikely that you even go to nostr without one person in your mind to follow here, in my opinion

most people talk about the people, and the protocol, not the client apps 
 I'm just saying that some people are so ubiquitously known that knowing of them & searching them out doesn't provide much proof of anything about the person searching & following. 

I'm probably misunderstanding something somewhere... I should just stay in my lane 😅 
 well it would be a red flag to spot an influencoor on nostr from X and they only show 5000 followers while they have a million on twitter 
 Eventually, yes. Once they establish themselves. That number is also incredibly unstable though so is it really reliable? 
 well, we can't bring all the stray lambs back from the brush but i think in the next 6 months a lot of tools will exist that will improve this... i for one am looking forward to the map of Nostr 
 Yeah, I'm of the mindset that follower counts should fade away & get replaced with other signal metrics while it's still early enough that it causes minimal pain. 
 i came here from xitter, i followed in people who i knew from there who were talking about here