It is actually true that life is all about "who you know". But who you know is largely dependent on who you are and what you do, and the people you know cannot do anything for you if you’re not doing good work.
A Quote from Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
How is your strategy of growing your connections on LinkedIn working out? When you ask a question on Twitter, how many replies do you get from your 1000 followers? I think the worst career advice out there is to go out and "network". The problem is that most people just want a job, and they see the strategy of networking as a shortcut. The people that could potentially offer you a job are put off because you're being so blatantly superficial. Nobody likes to feel like there just a tool in your baseball card collection.
As that quote suggests, you can be connected to dozens of people, but if they're connected because they clicked confirm to add that LinkedIn juice to their profiles, you might as well have no connections at all. I think having so called 'weak ties' is a good thing as a social animal, but they're only good when these ties are out there in IRL, in actual meatspace. There are weak ties and there are weak ties, if you know what I'm saying.
Just follow people you genuinely like. Do and show the work you want to do. The network will slowly show up after that.