@Nepenthe My impression is rather that actual nerds are few and far between on Mastodon. It used to be somewhat nerdy in its infancy, but it no longer is. Most people use it through mobile apps on iPhones and think that alternatives to any GAFAM products don't even exist. They don't want to read nerd stuff.
Once a nerd who ends up on Mastodon learns that there are Fediverse projects with way more features, and that Mastodon is actually quite lack-lustre and underequipped, as long as they don't have hundreds or thousands of faithful followers yet, they'll go elsewhere. Akkoma. CalcKey, as it's still being called but not for much longer. Mitra. Friendica.
And the hard-core nerds take the next step and move to someplace with working nomadic identity, namely Hubzilla or (streams). Seriously, Hubzilla has no casual, non-techy normies, and (streams) has even fewer.