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+title: "Of Mutuals and Firehoses"
+date: 2025-06-19
+draft: false
+tags:
+- Mastodon
+- BlueSky
+summary: "If you look at my Mastodon profile then you might notice I follow _a ton_ of people. (On BlueSky it's similar but a little lower than I'd like.) How do I manage them, and who do I look for when following?"
+---
+
+If you look at my [Mastodon](https://mastodon.art/@redstrate) profile then you might notice I follow _a ton_ of people. (On [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/redstrate.com) it's similar but a little lower than I'd like.) How do I manage them, and who do I look for when following?
+
+![My current Mastodon profile](mastodon.webp)
+
+The most obvious contenders are people who have similar interests to me: they make cool art, play games I enjoy, do reverse engineering, or is a general cool person. My other reason is one I don't see that often, is if they're _actually active_ on the platform. I think the easiest way to gauge this is to see how many people they're following:
+
+![A fake firehose](firehose.webp)
+
+In this case, I would be initially hesitant to follow this person. I'm going to call them "firehoses" - they just post stuff and immediately hide, with little interaction. This is _fine_ and I don't want to shame anything who is doing that - I'm sure you have reasons... but I don't like it these days[^1]. There's plenty of other people to follow out there, and **social media is an exchange** after all! If I do end up following this person, they're usually the first to get cut when I find my timeline is getting too busy.
+
+![Me when I'm following a firehose](unfollow.webp)
+
+In general I try to maintain a ~1/2 ratio of followers/following (I'll see if that actually scales.) I find that makes my timeline the best-kind-of-busy when reading it after a long day of work or in bed. My long-term goal is to replace the firehoses I follow with mutuals instead, which I think makes social media way more comfy ❤️
+
+[^1]: I mean on social media specifically. On something like RSS, I don't find this a problem at all due to the nature of the format (but it's cool to see interactions from the author in a comments section still!)