I agree that it's annoying to search through Dexter's spam to find things I actually want to read. I'm not opposed to threads being derailed, because side conversations happen and if I don't want to participate in that I don't have to.
My idea of a follow feature is basically a whitelist rather than blacklist - if I were to 'follow' 20 accounts of people whose posts I enjoy reading, I'd be able to open a separate tab that would show only threads where people I've followed have posted new things since my last view. So instead of viewing The Dexter Show on the main forum, I could open a tab that would only show threads that people I like have found important enough to contribute to on their main account. As I see more new users contribute things I like to the filtered threads, I can add more of them to my personal whitelist...if I wanted to avoid the 'main' forum completely.
I'm not sure waht you mean by the "point" of the squirrel? Is you wanting to ban it too?