Most of the people I've spoken to about reading Homestuck always are somewhat interested but only because they want to learn more about the trolls and want to know when they get to read about them. It can be a little confusing when most of the fandom is just Trollsona's and rarely is there content for Human characters. So they go in and see John instead of Karkat and are like "wtf where are the freaky lil gray dudes at :/ I wanted to read about them..." and you gotta break the news that they don't show up for like another 1k pages.

I was one of those people lol before I read Homestuck the only character I had ever seen was Karkat, and I thought he was the main character. I didn't know about John or the Beta kids, and thought I had clicked onto a whole different comic entirely.