To follow or not to follow? That is the question.

I follow people to see their discussions. Otherwise, I will miss people I like to read what they have to say. I have 451 followers. I fear half are no longer active on Mylot. As I have been active here for 11 years now off and on. I am following 673. As there are some people I want to see when they post new discussions and give my opinion. When I first hop on Mylot, I check my notifications. After that, I check out the activity of follows. From there I will explore. The more you have that follow you and you follow back, is a chance for them to see your discussion and get replies. Yet, you have to put in an effort to visit and reply on other members discussion and not expect people to only come to yours. It really is a give and take type thing.

I go to my 'following' list and read new discussions from there.

I don't think it means anything. I don't get notified of discussions posted by people I follow or anything at all about them. Another thing I don't understand is blocking someone. I blocked someone a few weeks ago whose discussions were very nasty, I think they have left the site. But I could still see the person's work after blocking them. So I don't understand what use that feature is, either.

Here on myLot, I follow 32 members. 442 members follow me. Most names mean nothing to me. I've never had any contact with these people nor did they have any contact with me. Why should I follow them back? When I post a discussion here on myLot, I get 25 to 30 reads on average. Where are the more than 400 members who 'follow' me? Well, not everyone has enough free time to check the latest posts every day. But I could expect at least ~200 reads every time I post something, don't you think? So, to cut a long story short, these lists mean next to nothing. I've got some online friends whose posts I read when I see them in the Most Recent Posts list. They seem to do the same to me. We exchange comments and that's it.

I follow to find their new discussions.

For me, I follow so that I can see if they have new discussions. That's what I check after I finish my notifications. Wait, I will check if I am following you. I didn't see any new discussions from you from my follows tab.

I follow people that post interesting stuff. I go to follows first so as to cut out a lot of crap in most recent. Sometimes I don't find anything interesting in the follows section..and fairly often I unfollow people if I find them consistently uninteresting to me.