The only reason I don’t have the same Mastodon experience as you guys tbh is that I’m on a private instance, you have to have a membership (to something else) to get on and it’s all about that shit more or less, and so I stay on my instance and follow a few randoms. The Federated tab is a nightmare, I just avoid it. Here on lemmy it is the exact opposite, I mostly stay on subbed or all (but my instance is great here too).