You can tune the alerts to an extent so that you don’t receive them for everything. Click on the bell then click preferences.I agree with this; I've been given too much false hope by what I'd hope to be a reply to one of my messages.
You’ll see from my options I have set it to only alert me when I’m quoted or mentioned, but not when there’s just a new post in a thread I follow, which I can check on the watched threads page separately.