Damn, yeah, that’s enough of a bad first impression (mainly the “loli” shit) that I’d be put off from it too. I’d misread/understood your post at first (as you having joined the named instances vs. one federated with them), so my bad there!
That’s one of the misfires of folks trying to tell people to join any instance when suggesting Mastodon/Lemmy. The instances do matter, as you rapidly found out, since the admins/mods determine which other instances you may have the misfortune of seeing posts from.
I managed to avoid a similar, “uh fuck i’m out” experience by doing a little more digging on the first Mastodon instance I joined, but I recognize that really shouldn’t be expected of everyone.