Someone who used to reply a lot—more than once a day—went totally quiet a few weeks ago. Which makes sense as I discover they unfollowed me haha. Likely intentional as they’d probably wonder why I went silent.
It’s totally fine. I won’t always be for someone even if I have been for a while. But I do wonder—slightly, intellectually exercise—what moved someone from frequent conversation to ciao. Single offensive comment? Cumulative disenchantment? Culling of less favored mutuals? Something else?
We all have our own sensibilities, and that’s how it should be.
In 15 years of Twitter and here, I’ve rarely actively unfollowed anyone. The sites have much more frequently—and annoyingly—unfollowed of their own volition.
Mostly it’s been to cull people who don’t follow me when I don’t particularly need their thoughts. With mutuals, I’m much more likely to mute for a while if I need a break from a topic. And I don’t necessarily unfollow a mutual who unfollows me. Why, if I like their stuff?
@Holberg It usually starts with following an account that has well thought-out reposting of news and or commenting on current events, but after awhile they start blowing up my feed and it gets tiresome to filter/scroll by their posts. Funny you should ask this as I just unfollowed a person for this very reason.
@Holberg I'm shorter on patience now, which I regret, but... gestures at everything... so I'm quicker to unfollow than I used to be. (To be fair. there are also more drains on my mental health so I can't afford those that are easy to avoid.)
Beyond the obvious criteria (bigotry, etc.), I now unfollow for topics that make me sad or exhausted: pandemic naivete, tech gullibility, amplifying propaganda, steady bleakness beyond my filtering capacity. It's not personal, it's survival.
@Holberg Oh! I realized that I sometimes do a follow / unfollow thing, unintentionally, if I see a good comment from someone, but because of how federation works I can' see the content on their profile. Sometimes I'll take a leap of faith and follow them -- and if it turns out to be a bad call, I'll unfollow as more information is available. It probably makes me look like a jerk but it's really me being generous with follows within the info constraints of the fediverse.
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