I've been using Github long enough that I have my first name (not a terribly uncommon name) as a username. I have no idea what it even means to follow somebody

I've been using Github long enough that I have my first name (not a terribly uncommon name) as a username. I have no idea what it even means to follow somebody on github. Why? I use github to host my code, to collaborate with others. I use issues, sometimes wiki, pull requests (obviously) and so on. But it's not a social platform for me. I don't want it to be a social platform. I guess following means I get some kind of notification when they do something? I'm drowning in gh notifications already, and switched off most. So I'd discard followers on github as any kind of metric right from the start.