Honestly, I just want instances that focus on niche interests. An instance for sports with communities of different leagues, instances for pc gaming with communities for amd/intel/Nvidia, etc

That way, main instances with more generic context like lemmy.ml or beehaw dont get clogged

I remember reddit was sorta seen that way back in the day. The concept of of subreddits that had different sorting features and the like was a lot different than forums way back when

Thats my feel as well. The whole idea of small text blurbs that arent conversational and not grouped by topic never really worked for me. It also just feels too personality driven, where large accounts are what gets major precedence - I prefer when a small account or whatever can make a great post that gets a lot of attention.

I can already tell the Lemmy is going to fit me a lot better than Mastodon, even tho I did enjoy that for a few months