I suspect that possibly a majority of my followers are implied follow-back requests. As a rule, I follow back all new followers that are not obviously spam, and i get very few of those, knock on wood. I get hardly any spammy or weird story comments, perhaps 5% or less, which I'm very happy about.

When one of my stories are boosted and "hits" as it were, I will spend quite some time answering responses, but I do take to time to answer each individually.

That said, I am slowing down on the story writing and publishing, just spending more time living the "other" life, reading, walking, meditating, etc.