...Maybe I happen to hold myself to impossibly high standards or am just far too disciplined for my own good, but I don't know why it's not more normalized to only follow first if you intend on actually making the first move or already know what muse you want to throw at somebody.
Like, back when I ended up remaking Vivian's blog, I only proceeded to initially follow blogs I could see myself interacting with long term instead of literally everybody that had been on my following list from my archived blog or muses I can't see Vivian threading with, just because 1000+ followers is a lot, but every now and then, I'll have people who will still follow me on their remade blog (despite the fact they never made an attempt to interact with Vivian on their archived blog before remaking) and then subsequently go months, not interacting with me or when I proceed to make the first move, become the type who would not meet me halfway/always take yet rarely give.
I mean, one ex-mutual ended up rationalizing it's because the dash moves so fast, to the point where they will inevitably miss stuff, but if you ultimately remade your blog because you follow way too many people to begin with, why then would you go on to keep following more people, reblogging promos from new folks, and promoting the blog you remade just to escape having a big following (which would inevitably make you trapped in an endless cycle of always having to remake anyways)? Seriously, if you're already struggling to keep up with your dash, thereby causing you to inevitably miss starter calls/ask memes, why don't you reach out to people you follow first yet haven't interacted with yet through IMs (like some of my partners do) in order to not seem like you're treating your mutuals like a mere number to your follower count?
I dunno, man... I just think it's irresponsible to spread yourself thin and fall back into old bad habits because you yourself lack self control and are greedy for more mutuals to write with despite being aware you can't realistically get to all of them.
Personally, if I don't have any ideas on how Vivian would interact with a muse/don't see long-term interactions happening, I'm the type to deliberately not even follow quality blogs first (no matter how nice a mun seems or how great their writing is/how interesting their muse is), yet I feel like not everyone would do the same... in fact, I truly get the sense that because Vivian is a female muse and female muses don't get attention-ed as much compared to male muses, some would end up following Vivian first in order to not seem 'misogynistic' or are doing so simply for nostalgia reasons due to the fact we used to ship together/write extensively before I archived.
Regardless, you can't even criticize somebody for their inaction without them treating it as a personal attack or their mutuals defending them like sheep... and it's just so damn exhausting. Why, considering what I had told somebody in private previously got leaked, I actually get why some are now too scared to address any issues they have with their partners. It's because when they did communicate, the other person they talked to then proceeded to start drama that didn't even have to occur. Of course, I do still think it's important to have the difficult conversations with your partners, but given how quickly one would resort to crying victim to their friends as soon as conflict arises, it's no wonder communication has gotten significantly worse in the RPC.
Now, you might say, 'But Livi, you do realize muns on Tumblr have a life outside of roleplaying, right? Instead of complaining about their flakiness and their bad time management skills, why don't you give them more grace?', and while I will concede that may be true, it's exactly because our time is finite in my opinion that we have to make the difficult decision to sometimes not click the follow button or hold ourselves back from adding more to our plate (even if you feel like you would be missing out on great partners/writing by doing so).
