While Blorp has the ability to mark post and comment replies as read or unread, it doesn’t appear to be able to mark all unread replies as read simultaneously, a potentially useful feature for those simply looking to clear their backlog.
It would also be useful to extend the ability to mark replies as read or unread to DMs as well.
Sorry I never followed up here. Do you find yourself looking at your own profile that often? I would have assumed messages is more commonly viewed than your own profile. If the answer is yes, I’m curiously what information you’re looking at your own profile for. Just so I can better understand.
Personally, seeing the votes my posts or comments are getting is an encouragement to participate more. One could argue it encourages a harmful karma-seeking system, but I think that knowing that people are reading one’s posts and comments, even if not commenting themselves, is an encouragement to keep using Lemmy. Perceptions that the platform is dead—such as assuming one’s posts are not being read due to not getting responses—could lead some users to return to Reddit.