It's only useful if their "Who can view my story" setting is "Everyone". If it's set to "My Friends" you must send a friend request and they must accept it. There's also "Custom" so you can specifically block cooldad1969 or pick a subset of friends. Similar deal for "Who can send me snaps" — settings are "Everyone" or "My Friends".

edit: I guess this is a good example — without deep familiarity with the app you could assume they don't post to their Story if it's empty, or could believe that snaps received in the message view (not the main list) were recently taken (those have been sent from the camera roll)