Imho, these are just cravings. Dopamine is addictive like cocaine and we’ve been trained by SM to seek the acknowledgement like drug addicts seek their next dose. I feel it degrades the quality of interactions. Forums don’t have that, IRC doesn’t have that, they work fine. It’s only recent media that added this engagement hook, “seen by A, B, C”, “liked” etc.

i understand. My thinking was purely based on the fact that sometimes you just want to give a "thanks" or "im on it" reply to a tag or a mention, without necessarily clogging the channel with yet another reply/post. But I see the issue you raise as well.

you can use #whisperenter to follow

#whisperenter to follow cool!

only the first post needs it, then the thread gets out of /latest and /hot, still public if you go to the person’s page or the thread itself but won’t spam the main channels

also another reason is that I do want people to react with a full note, i feel it has a more human character, even if it’s just an emoji

Ah! That's a great use case for #whisperenter to follow. Though, now I suppose every time someone discovers that use it vanishes from the main thread. :D