When Facebook first became popular and I searched for possible "friends" - finding one who was also on the service was SO EXCITING. I mean, we can CONNECT! Right?
Then Twitter came along. I was on Twitter and I only followed @aplusk and @cnnbrk for 6 full months. I didn't *really* get it until I did some local searches and found @mandreano and then the entire Lehigh Valley came to my stream. Welcome!
I friended and followed like I was going to the Electric Chair tomorrow.
Then when I logged into the services, I was presented with posts from a lot of people about a lot of stuff I didn't care about. And the services lost value. I was wading through lots of garbage posts and not having fun.
I see it a bit like this: You go to a party and you know a bunch of folks, but you also DON'T know a bunch of folks. They are engaged in conversation and your interest was piqued so you "friended/followed" them by entering the conversation. Then you realized after 5 minutes that this guy/gal is a bore, a drunk, not funny, or just simply not for you and you leave that conversation to go to the next one.
That's why I'm unfollowing/unfriending people. Don't take it personally, I've just decided to move on to another conversation. And if we see each other at a party, remember being friends on Facebook or mutual followers on Twitter: ISN'T REAL LIFE.
Just sayin'.