absolutely this. I am very picky about who I follow.
On the flip side, I am also very liberal with blocking people I know I will have absolutely no interest in engaging with (spammers, beggars, scammers, zero-value content posters, etc)
People often recommend "following a bunch of people" to increase the quality or value of your feed. I disagree. I made that mistake on Twitter several years ago and have regretted it ever since. I became a lot more strict about who gets a follow. It's an opportunity cost in my mind. When the feeds in most social clients are chronological, when you check in you want to see posts from people you respect and post quality content.
My recommendation is to take a long term view - in a couple years you don't want to be following 1000 people, 900 of which don't provide you any value. You just followed them to "make your feed better" in the summer of 2023.
Before you follow someone, check their bio and their feed and ask yourself a couple questions.
Are you interested in most of what their posting?
Better yet, are you okay with seeing fewer posts from your favorite people since posts from this new person will increase the number of posts to sift through?
With clients like nostr:npub12vkcxr0luzwp8e673v29eqjhrr7p9vqq8asav85swaepclllj09sylpugg and the ability to create lists in some clients, do you need their posts in your feed?
Feel free to add other questions if you have them. #grownostr
Discussion
Yep, I’m the same.