After all, following people is for you, not for the others. Followers are just a vanity metric anyway. If you don't want a feed, that's totally up to you.
I personally try to visit the people I enjoy reading from the most manually as you plan to do, but what I've noticed is that I keep forgetting to visit one or another from time to time and could forget about favorite steemians for weeks on end. The feed helps with that as it adds some serendipity to remembrance ;)