I can't help but join in with the current "discourse" spawned by a follow-recommendation feature in the latest RC version of Mastodon.

I've seen some take it as an attempted movement towards better user retention, and talk about why people come to mastodon and why they (don't) stay.

To add my view here, I think there's fundamentally two ways of using microblogging:
• Peer-oriented
• Celebrity-oriented

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Peer-oriented microblogging is my name for using microblogging to talk to your equals / peers. Everyone is assumed to be more or less approachable, and number of followers is a meaningless metric.
Most of the "old guard" of mastodon (I include myself here) are avid practioners of this, since this kind of microblogging can bootstrap itself in an empty space, by connecting with whomever else happened to be around.

Celebrity-oriented microblogging is my name for using microblogging to follow a number of people you find interesting, without expecting any direct interaction. This slowly leads to interesting people accumulating followers, which leads to follower counts being a metric for "interestingness".
And thus two classes of users are born; followers and celebrities.

@zatnosk I will say sometimes I follow interesting people just for incitely posts. Not for.... any reasons of celebrity worship. More because they have good ideas and I want to hear more.