@eldritch_cookie seems like you make yourself use the mastodon service. That's not how it should be. I think it is (like most social networks) for writing, not for reading. You just post what you want to make available to the others. Like on a site or a blog. And only subscribe to those who posted a link to their blog somewhere else where you found it by accident. The whole concept of "searching" for something is strange (if you don't have a problem to solve, which you don't). You come to a thing when you need it. I don't think you often use google to find someone's personal thematical blog or tweeter, do you?
@eldritch_cookie yes, you understood quite right. You SHOULD generally NOT use search on a social network site to find friends or followers or whom to follow. It should happen naturally and generally should not depend on the platform/site you are using.
The urgent desire to find someone you don't know, as I think, is more a marketing invention. And even more - to press the "follow" button so the whole world knows that you two are interconnected. Some kind of exhibitionism.
Instead of searching you should come to a place with people who have similar interests and talk and interact to them. Like ancient Greeks who (if they were not slaves and had time) came to the central town square (called "forum") to socialise.
@canwolf sorry i must have misunderstood your post, but are you saying that i shouldn't look for interactions in a social media platform? if i want to interact with other people i NEED either followers or to be following people.
i can't control who follows me so the solution is to follow people,
if i want to find people to follow there are only so many ways to do that,
i could look for interesting people in other sites, the problem with this option is that i have yet to see someone link to their mastodon on a blog or youtube video or reddits post or anywhere, so this option is inviable.
that leaves me with only in-site options the search bar as i mentioned could use some improvements, and the public timelines are horrible. so something needs to change.