I recently made an Instagram account for university, and I’ve been following people and people have been following me. If people follow me, should I follow them back? Should I accept follow requests whenever people send them? I guess there’s probably no rules about this stuff, but I don’t know, this is my first time using a regular public social media platform and social interactions also take me a bit to figure out.
Follow back who you like to follow. Some people might consider it impolite not following them back but I think that’s kinda silly.
I would approve follow requests always when you are following the person who sent the request. Sometimes someone follows me but does not accept my request to follow them back and that always strikes me as kinda frustrating, especially if I don’t know who that person is.
I came back to the top to write a leading question: is Instagram going to be the main social network used to communicate? That changes the purpose of following. If not, then here’s my take regarding content alone:
Do I care about their lives? I’ll follow back. Do I like their content? I’ll follow back. Do I not care about their lives and don’t like their content? I don’t follow back.
My interests have major overlap with some opposing ideologies and if they make it a part of their content, I’m not following them. If they post low effort bullshit about their outdoor alcohol without doing any proper photography technique, I don’t need to see that snapshot of their day unless they’re a core person I care about.
If you don’t follow back, they’re probably going to forget within a day. “Oh I don’t check it often”. You’re also allowed to unfollow people if you don’t like their content later. It’s not a big deal. If it’s a big deal to them now, they’ll either figure out it isn’t a big deal later or they’re always going to prioritize something I refuse to. Follow count should be natural but it will always feel like a competition and a measurement of success. Always has been, on every social platform.
