DDG "Mastodon". Second result is "joinmastodon.org" which I assume is the right thing. OK so far.

No social content up-front on the page. Instead I have to watch a video if I want to know what I'm getting in to. (Yes I know Twitter just greets you with "sign up/log in" on their homepage these days, but everyone knows what they are so it's fine).

"Get started", not "sign up". Looks like I'm in for a process.

Four boxes telling me what it means to choose a community. Nothing immediately actionable. List of community categories on the left. Nothing against furries, but apparently this is the kind of place where they rate a top-level category, out of only ten categories... so. Hm. Ok.

One of the infoboxes: "You can move your account to a different community later without losing your followers." Ok, but what if I get banninated for some reason? Do I lose my stuff then? Can I still move it? How much control can an op take over my data if I upset them? Or if they just stop paying their server bill without notice? Yes sure, it may be "the same thing that happens if Twitter suddenly stops paying their server bill" but in any given year that's way less likely than that one of these listed community servers will do the same. Guess answering all that requires outside research.

I'll try the "general" category.

It's not clear, even in "general", whether some of these are topic-specific spaces. I think not? But it's really hard to tell and I'm just guessing. Some are "request invite" and it's cool that's supported.

Clicking on a few "join" buttons, all the pages I'm greeted with are practically identical aside from the color theme. That's good. Not sure I love the way "log in" and "sign up" are both given equal visual and page-position weight, considering I showed up via a "join" button, but whatever, that's a bit nitpicky.

There's a "see what's happening" link on the sign-up/in pages. Back on the joinmastodon.org instance list, they have "browse directory"(??? Directory of what? ???) links on each instance's little card, which seems to take you to some kind of user list.

Following the "see what's happening" link on a likely-looking instance. This instance, which noted on the sign-up page that it's "mostly English-language", presents me with about 50% posts in non-English languages (several different ones), and the English-language posts are context-free replies, it looks like, so they convey no useful meaning to me. It's like getting a random sampling of individual SMS messages belonging to 100 different people. The handful that aren't meaningless are kind of off-putting. I still don't know what's up with this whole thing, really, aside from I guess it's Twitterish? Kind of? Judging from the @ portions of the usernames, I think these posts are from a bunch of different servers, so I'm really not sure what the point is of treating the instances as separate and the choice as meaningful. Is it like email, so it doesn't matter where you're hosted as long as you have some host? They act like that's not the case and it really matters which host you choose, for reasons that mostly have nothing to do with longevity, stability, or likelihood of continued service, but I can't tell, from what I'm seeing, why. That's how I'd choose an email provider. I'm not getting how this is different, if this is what the "feed" looks like.

> I really expected Mastodon to get more adopted among the regular folks

Between the above and that if I didn't frequent nerd-spaces I'd never have heard of it in the first place, I think I can see why.