Following - What's the practical use/result/intention?

[UR20Z]

OK, so I see the "follow" user XYZ option, and I've actually hit it for a few, and I'm told that several have "followed" me, but I'm left wondering - What's the practical use? I expected that when I "follow" somebody, it'd give me some sort of indication when they post something new - sort of like a "subscribe" on youtube, or similar. But if that's the case, either I followed somebody who has remained silent ever after, or I did something wrong. I've never (that I'm aware of, anyway) gotten any notification of any kind that someone I "followed" has posted anything, even though I've seen new posts from them in the process of reading topics, so obviously, it isn't that I've only followed people who have ceased posting after I followed them. Which makes it seem to me as though a "follow" here does nothing. Or is it that any such notifications go to email? (In which case, it's no wonder I've seen none, as the protonmail account used to set up this account was intentionally a one-shot "burner" account, set up specifically to be used exactly once during the signup process, and totally abandoned after that - The only reason I can even say what that address was is the fact that it shows up in my account details info - What password did I use? <shrug> Beats the hell out of me, and I don't really have any interest in retrieving it)

As far as somebody else deciding to "follow" me, I assume it's effectively little more than a sort of "popularity poll", and that much only "by accident", so to speak, since, as noted, I don't see any sign that it actually does anything besides adding the "followed" person's handle/avatar to your "you are following yaddayaddayadda" list, and yours to their "yaddayaddayadda is following you" list.

Anybody got any more info on the concept?

 

[Mare Lover 1975]

Look at your news feed, that's were the posts and such people you follow are shown.

Other than that I have no clue as I have nearly all notifications turned off, too annoying being notified of everything all the time.

 

[ZTHorse]

I follow zoos so I don't have to remember their usernames when i have to send a PM.

 

[UR20Z]

Look at your news feed, that's were the posts and such people you follow are shown.

Other than that I have no clue as I have nearly all notifications turned off, too annoying being notified of everything all the time.

Aha! That explains it - Until just now, I'd never bothered to even try looking at that, since I was under the impression it did something COMPLETELY other than what I now see it does. I was expecting something more like the RSS newsfeeds I used to use (*). Thanks! That helped a bunch!

(*) Back before Apple, in their wisdom, decided that RSS stuff should go to your mailbox, rather than showing up as what amounted to a dynamic list of bookmarks in your browser the way it worked for years - talk about completely wrecking a system that had been working absolutely great until that point... Almost as bad as they fucked things up by breaking iTunes into separate "Books" and "Music" apps - They took 10 years of collecting audiobooks and categorizing, organizing, and picking which ones would be loaded onto my iPod/iPhone exactly as I wanted them to play with about 3 clicks per book, and turned trying to get a specific book onto my iPod or iPhone into an operation kinda like reaching blindly into a barrel and pulling out a piece of a book, only to find that it's not the book I wanted, never mind being the chapter/segment I was looking for - a process that takes idiotic amounts of time and effort to do and get the book onto the device in the right order. What used to be a 5 minute operation to put, for instance, the entire Stephen King "Dark Tower" series onto the phone/pod in the right order to just hit play, and listen from start to finish, now takes roughly an hour to get right, and even then, as often as not, I end up with a playlist of items that might or might not play in the correct order - And I don't just mean each book plays out of order - I mean I might be playing The Gunslinger, chapter 2, and have it be followed by Wolves of the Calla Chapter 8, then have that be followed by Drawing of the Three Chapter 1, and so on. Absolutely maddening...