I'm seeing lots of comments and complaints about the differences between Mastodon and Twitter. Most seem to be of the form "Why am I getting these replies to my posts? I never got these on Twitter.
I hate these!"

Of course, I'm not replying to those posts, because 99.9% of the posters don't really want an answer. They want to know that people to share their discomfort.

For the 0.1% who do want an answer, here it is. Twitter didn't hide those posters from you. Twitter hid you from the people who would make those posts.

That's right. Twitter did it's best to make sure that the only people who saw your posts were people who would like your posts. It wrapped you up tightly, made sure you were comfortable, and made sure you wouldn't cause anyone else discomfort. Or effect change, for that matter.

OK, butterflies. You're out of your cocoons now. The people who never saw you before can't help but notice you. They might not get your jokes. And you might hear back from them. It's not so much demographics as lack of a cocoon.