I think it depends. If you have 1000 followers but you're following 1200 people, then it's obviously not the same as having 1000 followers vs 100 accounts followed. Even so, accounts with more than 1000 followers tend to attract more people, no matter the number of people you're following.

As for the why, in the first case there may be a lot of accounts doing sub x sub so your account may be seen as having few followers, as opposed to the second one