I've been jokingly calling Mastodon "Nicorette for Twitter". It looks and feels like Twitter except it's designed to be unengaging and not very interesting so within a few months most users fall off and stop using it.
It's a social media cessation tool.
@searls or maybe you’re not be following (enough) people that engage *you*?
Twitter hid a lot of that.
My time here has been relaxing, engaging on my terms, at first limited, but now very reminiscent of Twitter before the trending topics and algo-timeline-gaming ruled all.
Took effort and patience for sure, just like it did then. And clearly, most people don’t care enough to seek out and assemble a timeline worth checking. It’s slow, like RSS. That’s obviously why Twitter went mainstream.
Justin Searls
olivierlacan
Caleb Hearth 
Steven Harman