Laura Howes
Free Use BunnyThe great thing about Mastodon is that when I get unfollowed or no engagement, I can't blame an algorithm: my toots are just *that bad*.
No, this toot is not about fretting over the numbers, this is me being sad that people I enjoyed interacting with unfollow and then I get all awkward about interacting with them, anymore.
Idealistic Pragmatist 
@JenWithGravy there’s someone I unfollowed (due to unmasked indoor selfies), but they have kept following and interacting with me. I appreciate it, because I like them, and this way l still get to chat with them without having to stumble across posts that upset me.
@IPEdmonton Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I definitely understand that.
@JenWithGravy just remember: unfollowing is ALMOST ALWAYS about the unfollower, and only rarely implying something bad about the person being unfollowed.
Sam Levine@JenWithGravy Honestly I never check if someone is still following me (since on the web interface I have to go to their profile), which means I do quite possibly interact with people who have unfollowed. And unless is was a "soft block" I assume they just didn't want my ridiculous boosting filling their feed (or maybe hate baking? or chemistry?).
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@JenWithGravy On the concept of the "soft block" I utterly despise that passive aggressive garbage, since I don't regularly check my followers & mutuals. So if I run across someone posting to say a hashtag I follow I don't realize they did the "soft block" and if I interact they say I violated their boundaries, which was entirely unintentional if they never told me the lines changed. I think this only happened once, but it was about a year ago and I almost gave up on fedi over it.
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@SRLevine I've never understood “soft blocking”, like, if someone I followed turned out to be quite abusive, that's always been just a straight-up block. It's bloodless and takes care of whatever was bothering me about the account.
@JenWithGravy Yeah, it puts the onus on the other person to follow an invisible guideline, which is why I hate it. The person had an alt (and I later saw another account pop up due to a server move) and they at least used the same avatar so I had to mute them all so I wouldn't accidentally interact. If my posts show up in their feed I don't care, but I don't want to forget and interact again.
@SRLevine I've had to do similar regarding blocking alts. I feel you there. I feel like if you didn't want to see me on main, you don't want to see me elsewhere and I just take care of that for you so I don't have to think about it.
Ryan 
@JenWithGravy I just assume everyone will unfollow me at some point and, y'know, I get it 🙂
@Dunstable It would be a good philosophy for me to adapt because, yes, I read my own toots and, uh, yikes. 😅
toybox [de]@JenWithGravy You can pretend "they" wrote an algorithm just for you?