I limit my following list to only a few people whose content I want to get an alert for. I actively curate with the /created page which does not give any particular user an advantage. This gives me the best of both worlds. The more people I follow, the closer my feed gets to the /created tab and thus the less direct utility it provides me. It could provide social utility by making people think I am seeing their posts more often, but I don't want to present my following list in a less honest way like that.

I did in fact provide you with an upvote on your intro post. Sadly it was at an unfortunate timing for you in terms of the reward pool.