I’ve thought about writing this post the past 3 days but always thought it’d be silly or something. But after 3 days, the universe seems to want me to write this.
Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to head over to my profile and look at two things, my follower and following numbers. If it still stays the same by the time you’re reading this, you should see they’re both 50.
50-50 is literally used as an expression my local language for “balanced” and the fact that my following/follower number really lands on the numbers is a very cool coincidence wouldn’t you agree? A perfect balance between following and followers!
There’s a very good chance though that by the time you read this, someone else who saw this earlier would’ve tipped the scale by either following or unfollowing(I hope no one does lol). I know if I had seen a post like this, I most likely would’ve followed to tip the scale. I’m not saying this to in any way, influence you to follow me though, even though that would be much appreciated.
I haven’t really been looking at my following and followers list. I looked at it a couple days back when I was trying to figure out what date I made my Hive intro post. I know, “why were you looking for that information?”…It was to fill an application for the newbies initiative, a really great initiative that educates newbies on the workings of Hive. Basically, the dos and don’ts, how to do stuff and things like that. A part of the information required was to enter the date you made your introductory post, and your first after it. I won’t go much into detail about it, but you can check this post out if you want to know more about it and to apply. This will be especially helpful if you’re a newbie.
Now, back to topic. I haven’t really cared about the number of followers I have, simply engaged with people. That is not to say I don’t care about growing a following. I just think your following is not really up to you, but up to your content and the community, so there’d be no point stressing out about it. What I do stress over is my HP which for now, seems to be growing at a fairly good pace.
Whiles I’m on the topic of followers and following, I think it’d be great to mention something interesting I saw in acidyo’s recent post. You need to have some time to read this, but I promise you it’s worth it if you have the time.
Anyways an interesting thing he said was that he used to follow people back out of courtesy of getting a follow from them. Not just following back, but even voting people back because they did. This might be considered engagement to a lot of people, even me(until I read his post which is quite interesting really), but I saw a different angle to it, and I think I’m going to be more careful at scrutinizing and properly screening the people I follow in the future. In his post, he mentioned how you weren’t obligated to follow anyone back or vote them back just because they were doing same for you. I’m not and he wasn’t saying either that you shouldn’t follow or vote people people back after they follow or vote you, he just said to do it because you’re genuinely interested in the content they produce. Essentially what this means is that you’ll be genuinely interested in the posts that show on your friends feed, and will foster your engagement with them since their content are topics you’re interested in.
I don’t know where I’m headed with this post anymore and it has already a bit longer than I had planned so I’ll just leave it here. I know you found the idea of me writing about the 50-50 balance silly. If it is, I think we’ll both agree it’s a silly interesting coincidence though eeh:)
Who Authored This Post?
I am @depressedfuckup. The story behind my weird username is in my intro post if you have the time to read. I am a newbie and a content creator on Hive and a Biochemistry student outside of Hive. I write about my present, generally things going on with or around me. Please give this article an upvote and a reblog if you liked the content and leave a comment if you have something to say about it. Thanks for visiting my blog, have a great day!
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Well, this is me, I don't vote everyone who votes me back, neither I'm i doing the same for engagement as well. There has to be something in me that ticks before I do, let me tell you something, following the right people grows you to a certain extent, this is why it's a priority to always go after impact, education and the lessons you'll learn. When choosing the phone to engage or follow
Yes, I notice that about you.
I think the issue with following and voting back as a courtesy will mostly be a newbie problem. It takes a while to realize certain things on Hive, and even with the passage of time, you’ll have to engage with people to learn a lot of things and change your perceptions about things.
Thanks for the input man.
Well, irrespective, not following doesn't mean no support or engagement that's the big aspect or even some sort of assistance when it's being asked for. I go all the way out to do that online and offline, while the situation here can wait, some urgent situation requires some spontaneous action. Plus, building a following requires more than just clicking, more than the numbers game. At the end of the day, you can only do the best you can.
There are people who don't follow me, but I follow them and we're great friends here. So following people or not doesn't show dismissal or approval. It's only a formality.
I agree. I think the thing about following people is to stay updated on their activities, having their posts delivered directly to your post feeds. Aside this, following is more of a formality really.
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50/50 this is balanced.. lol. I have personally not taking a closer look at my followers and following but from time to time I use my feed to see what's going on in order not to miss anything from those that I'm following. Everyone has a different way of engaging but following back and voting back looks like returning a favor rather than engaging.
Uh oh, you've tipped the scale in the other direction! I need to unfollow to bring balance back! :D
I think @knowhow92 and I have a different idea of what 50-50 means! Skateboarding is all we think about when we think of 50-50 lol.
Yeah the following, voting and all that is certainly an interesting thought and experiment. I know I used to do the follow for follow stuff in the past for a few months. Then my follow list got obnoxiously long and I had to trim it up. I still do trim my following list, getting rid of excess junk and people that no longer post on the chain here.
I think if we spend time dropping comments all over the place and interact with people, if you develop a bit of a bond with them then you can do some follow business. However I comment with a fair bit of people on here and don't really follow them other than seeing their posts here and there. I kind of like the balance. We are acquainted and know of each other and what they do and are about but aren't necessarily obligated to follow unless we come to some interesting situation where we connect a little deeper. Like yourself, we engaged for a while and I thought we had really good banter and you seem to be a good dude with some good potential so I hope to watch you grow as I've watched people like @gvkanten and @albuslucimus grow from where I originally met and interacted with them what feels like years ago now! Lol. Lots of awesome people here for sure!
At the end of the day, quality over quantity!
Lol this is the first time I’ve heard of knowhow. I’ll have to check his profile out.
Yeah I think your first month of first few months on Hive are a bit messy because you really just follow and vote anyhow until you’ve kind of built a standard against which you vote or follow people. I’m glad we connected man. You’ve taught me a lot in just this short while.
I want to inform you about something though. I’ll be busy this week(have been busy even this week) with exam and I might not have time to moderate the Rant Community as much anymore until in 2 weeks when I’ll be done with exam. I hope you can understand and that I’ll be right back on the job as soon as exam is over. I think you’ll agree that I’ve done a fair job with the moderation so far:)
I requested for erikah to help me with a tutorial to follow a curation trail so hopefully by the end of today, she would’ve posted it and I’ll be following your trail. That way, whiles I’m inactive, my small HP and the one you delegated to me will be put to good use.