For context: to me, the value of participating in Mastodon as a social network is that there are a lot of people here who discuss (intelligently and with a sense of humor) subjects that I'm interested in , like FOSS and type design. But that's also true of many other online services, like web-based discussion forums, which are also very bubble-ish. I use those, too. But the notion that Mastodon itself was not going to operate in that same manner, frankly, fully evaporated super quickly.