I think I just realised why, in every wave, most people leave in a few days. It is because a majority of them are lurkers, even on Twitter, so they expect to come here and read instead of interacting with us and creating new conversations. If they can't find their favourite topic, they will dismiss us as just ‘programmers’ and ‘tech people’ and go away.

Take my advice: we're not one-dimensional beings that only know about, or are interested in, one field. We just might not talk about, I don't know, architecture if we're not prompted, so why don't you start that conversation yourself? Why don't you publish some pictures you'd like to discuss? We appreciate beauty and intelligent conversation. We're human beings.

Existing Mastodon users (I don't consider qoto to be Mastodon: qoto is Mastodon without the stupid) are also responsible for this behaviour, because a lot of them are pro-censorship, and, thus, do their worst to keep a significant part of Fedi invisible to newcomers, so that they're reduced to a tiny echo chamber instead of being free to explore the whole thing. “No, don't go there. It's full of bad people! And if someone looks at you funny, tell your admin immediately, so they go nuclear on their instance. Don't try to mute or block them yourself. That's not the Mastodon way!”