I feel like the instanced nature of this platform is so difficult to get used to. I have been spending more time here the last few days hoping it will 'click'

I appreciate the uncurated energy of Masto, but also don't have a lot of purpose for a traditional blog roll these days.

What am I missing? Or am I getting it and it's just not the platform for me?

@tenspd for sure it does work very different compared to all three other social media and is a little empty but it's completely user based, you decide what you want on your feed. You gotta follow creators or users who share similar interests to find others, aswell as use hastags. I'd be more then happy to guide you through the platform more cause honestly, this place is very fun

@OmniAbove guide away! I'd be curious what I haven't tried.

I've done plenty of searching my interests in hashtags. Unfortunately no plaintext search functionality makes finding creators that interest me difficult.
Lack of any way to preview an instance's local feed or user pool makes finding a spot to land difficult. Then moving to a new one is hekkin cumbersome.

Not knocking it as I'm sure it's working well for a certain type of user, I'm just not sure I'm that type of user

@tenspd makes sense, well for starters you can just use hashtags to explore posts and creators, some may not work but you have to be non specific like for examining using #gamer will bring up people
@OmniAbove I appreciate you :)