If Strava changes the hand gesture I’d go back. Imagine how much fun it would be just to give the finger to a few people. Someone stole your 50900th time up Pike Butte. Cool, I got something for you.
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Imagine someone that joins you at your table in a pub. They never join in the conversation. They never buy a round. In fact they never have a drink. They just keep appearing whenever you are in the pub. That’s what these followers who never do anything are like. They are just silent stalkers. Who wants that?
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Who wants random people you don’t even know following you just for some Kudos? Its so weird to me!
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Oh they aren’t even random. People you know but they just don’t engage on the platform. Similar would be someone who sends a friend request in FB, you know them, but when you look at their feed there’s nothing, and they don’t comment or like anything, they just lurk without engagement.
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Or they’ve been cloned/hacked ! I don’t know if it happens in Strava but certainly in Farceboke.
Maybe but for a long time I’ve no longer accepted those requests on Strava. I was only briefly on FB and just thought, what a load of hrsesht. Soon enough Strava will be gone.
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As one who never got the social media thing I envision: people will be cloning their persona with some AI chat bot. It will post fake activities and pictures. It will reply to others posts. Do all the likes for them. Bots talking to bots. As soon as enough people do this, maybe real people might actually interact in person.
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I def do this. I don’t follow people that don’t ride.
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I can’t understand folk doing that, for me it brings a smile to my face, ‘Johnny … is riding again’. In my mind its a good thing they are missing out on 
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I’m with you - having some level of requirement (give kudos often enough?) to be a part of the club seems very silly and self-centered.
On the topic of Kudos - I use kudos or comments when I feel like they’re especially warranted. I could care less if someone gives me kudos on a recovery ride or easy spin, but if I have a great race or a breakthrough workout, that feels good. If I give you kudos and “nice ride!” on every one of your rides…is that really valuable?
I also use Strava more to know what others are doing or where they’re riding - great way to stay in tune with the community and I don’t know why giving someone kudos on all of their rides should be an obligatory part of that.
I think it’s a great platform and I think the amount of historic rides/data are also super helpful. Another reason why I think amateurs hiding their power numbers is silly. It’s takes away value of the platform and really doesn’t give you any real benefit…
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Good point
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And when you know why FB was created, you realize that it IS a steaming pile of horse poop!
It was created as a way to terrorize and harass students at the uni they were at. Seriously. It started as a way to bully women and it’s lived up to that past very well. It’s an equal opportunity hot mess…
There are some good things that have come out of it, but in totality has it been useful to humanity, a net positive? Hell no…
And Twitter/X is proof of the power of noxious ‘social media’. The capability to misinform and disinform people. Yikes…
But back to Strava. I don’t think it would be as successful it it didn’t have some ‘social’ component.
Dropbox? You can even email links to your latest pics there.
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Wow, the negativity of this thread. I like seeing my friends’ rides and the pics they took. Some videos of crazy things the mountain bikers do, and nutty things people see on the mup. I like seeing if there’s snow on the mountain or contruction somewhere. I like being able to say wtf to my friend that just did 200 hard miles without him having to brag about it in conversation first. For friends who have moved away, or competitors I got to know who go back to their local scenes, it’s fun to get a glimpse of the cycling culture in other places and stay in touch with people who may come visit or come back again for next year’s stage race. The stupid ride titles are fun, and so are the segment fights.
Not to say I don"t wish they would work on good features (group chat, auto selecting the right bike), and the API change is stupid. But… meh. I have not noticed an exodus.
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The clubs functionality can be improved also, by keeping a history of the events and you could have the stupid LLM write a summary with some pics or something like that.
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I don’t know if it still exists or if you have to pay for it now but I used to use Photobucket.
It’s more like:
Anytime you go on a bike ride you type up, print out, and mail a short article to all your friends saying where you went and what you did. Often they send you back a postcard that says “Good Job”, sometimes there is extended correspondence, other times you send out the article and nobody sends you back anything in the mail.
One day an address of someone you don’t know appears in your rolodex so you start sending them the articles too. You don’t have to send anything to this person, you can take the address out and throw it away and keep your articles limited to friends.
~fin
I’ve never had much stress about followers on Strava. Usually it’s someone I know IRL or someone that did the same event as I even if we didn’t meet. If I get a follower that is a stranger, doesn’t live in town or nearby, or is someone who is following thousands of people/a member of hundreds of clubs/etc. I can just force unfollow them and don’t worry about it. I’m pretty quick to block, too.
I’ve found a lot of inspiration from the activities people post on Strava. BITD it helped me find routes, events, and group rides. Now I mainly use it as a journal for my big rides and events and enjoy having an information hub both myself and other people can reference in real life.
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+1 to this. Couldn’t agree more.
I’m quite happy with that actually.
The main reason I follow people on Strava is to see what they’re up to. When people follow me I assume it’s a similar intention. I’m not looking for or expecting validation from them.
If I want social interaction I’ll get it in real life. I dont even have notifications in Strava enabled.
Your comment makes me think that when you’re in a group chat, if not every single person in that chat responds with an emoji reaction to your comments, you remove them from the group chat 
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Are there people on Strava who follow you but have no viewable activities themselves?