I was reverse engineering the nostr web socket messages last night.

My following:npub responses included #[0]'s npub in hex format. I was excited thinking he was following me.

Turns out message format is:

Following:my_npub -> someone I am following -> bunch of p tags with the people that one is following.

The reason why following # is easily calculated while it takes a while for followers # to load, often not reliable due to limited relays.