You probably need to follow more people. Nostr gets a lot better once you find some people to follow. You can glance through my follow list for some quality nostriches to get started. 

 Any recommendations on what to do when my follows, be it for users or hashtags, don’t stick? 

 What does "don't stick" mean? They are unfollowed? Which app are you using? 

 Yes, unfollowed.  Using Damus app on iPhone 

 Someone told me to add more relays. That helped for me. It still sometimes doesn’t load. But most of the time it loads now.