My opinion is that Imgflip should in general have fewer things that resemble a popularity contest and more things that encourage entertaining or useful content. A central leaderboard of any kind motivates people to be on the very top, which is not necessarily a good thing to do. Some of the best content can be in more niche or less understood topics, but those posts obviously don't receive as many upvotes simply because of the smaller audience. I want us to encourage that type of content, as opposed to content like uncreative upvote begging.
Follower count is a little different from the points displayed on the current leaderboard, but has similarities.
Also, before sorting anything on the site by follower count we might need to de-dupe followers and ignore small accounts or alt accounts so that the follower count always has a similar meaning.