RE: The Psychology of the Steem Follower
I think you could separate point 2 into 2a and 2b. 2b is obvious, yes, you are going to follow people sharing interests with you.
However, I think it's totally possible to follow people writing "good articles" (it's always subjective right) that you could have none or only a marginal interest in, or simply out of curiosity, to broaden your horizons. Of course, you have to stumble upon them, sometimes because they comment on one of your posts, sometimes because they are resteemed by one of the person you follow.
Also, in 2a you could also fit users that provide daily/weekly best-of of posts that only sometimes will be interesting for you. For me, @francosteemvotes (daily French) and @curie (just found about this week) are doing an excellent job at it. I find myself reading things about architecture, comic drawing, etc. that are outside of my interests. I think you always get something out of it.
That said, like @lifeaef, I try to limit the number of persons I follow because I try to look at/read everything happening in my feed and I have zero interest in following people for their power (point 3)
I wish I could figure out how to attact @curie, I have managed to get one of my articles noticed in the past but there's no info around to say how.
You did? Wow, that's no small feat I think.
Do you know if mentioning a user (like curie) in a comment or post in hope of getting noticed is something frowned upon by the community?
'post in hope of getting noticed is something frowned upon by the community?'
I don't think so, that was not my intention. I just attended a Steemfest in Birmingham, UK and asked this very question but it seemed nobody could really answer it.
Oh I was not referring to your mention in the comment, I did that too several times, but more in general would it be bad to just put a mention at the end of a post. Sort of like a "hey there, what do you think".
I wish we had a Fine Gentlemen's Code of Conduct post or something ;-)
It's really anything goes here, you make up your own rules but there can be repercussions. If its good enough it will be picked up I guess. This article is already getting quite mammoth with the responses and comments. That is what I was looking for, a healthy debate.