Twitter/microblogging is a weird thing in general but you seem to have the idea. It can be useful for following events or people who write interesting things.

Mastodon hashtags are the way to discover conversations and people to follow, they go across instances in search.

I just love the fact that Mark Ruffalo is using Mastodon

Sometimes it's useful following specific projects or organizations you're interested in to be notified when anything interesting is going on. In a way similar to an RSS feed I suppose

@Cuteblooded @Troll I just follow a bunch of people and hashtags. Anybody suggests following something or someone I do. It's easy to unfollow if you end up not liking the content from someone or some hashtag.

@Cuteblooded @Troll shout into the void... Or voice an opinion... If enough of us voice an opinion it might change things... the alternative is keeping silent and that is not mentally healthy

I always had the same issue the few times I tried to use mastodon and twitter.

@Cuteblooded @Troll just keep posting and follow some interesting people you'll get it

@Cuteblooded @Troll I found that posting about stuff that interests me, following bright people who respond, and using hashtags is not a bad way to start. And check the local feed and the fedi feed from time to time to find new people to interact with.
#welcome

@Cuteblooded @Troll You can find topics using hashtags (#).

https://fedi.tips/

Why yes, I do have a moment to SPLIT YOUR LUNGS WITH BLOOD AND THUNDER

I THINK THAT SOMEONE IS TRYING TO KILL ME

I saw them for the first time during the Unheavenly Skye tour.

My first time seeing Coheed too!

It was one hell of a show.

a harassing heresy ? defo sounds like the witnesses

Look up nitter

The way to get that to change is to not go to Twitter, and if any of those people have another outlet, read and interact with that one.

Nah it'll never be like Twitter. Those users will all line up for Bluesky

Honestly, I feel like Mastodon is kinda never going to be like Twitter, even if its user count were to grow by two orders of magnitude. There are several reasons why, as the other replies point out, but the most important (IMO) is that Mastodon is just not a profit-driven platform. And if Mastodon is not a profit-driven platform, it is not designed to maximize user engagement. And if it is not designed to maximize user engagement, it is not designed to encourage toxic behavior.

At the risk of sounding like a door-to-door fediverse evangelist: the good thing about mastodon is you can always move to a small and quirky instance, or even start your own small and quirky instance and defederate from any parts that you don't like.