I thought it was more 'social media for people that don't like normal social media'. It's not being advertised too on a social media platform and seeing things/interactions that you actually care about and/or are interested in (generally speaking at least).

Social media optimizes for engagement. Maybe some folks are into that...or addicted to it...but I remember a time before engagement was hyper-incentivized, where hanging out someplace on the internet was because you liked the people or the community surrounding it.

Mastodon reminds me a lot more of those old-school internet hangout spaces, like IRC channels and web forums, than it does Twitter, despite wearing its artifice.

If preferring community spaces to habit-forming social media firehoses is somehow cast as "not being able to handle social media," then...guilty as charged, I guess, though it continues to escape me why anybody would consider that a bad thing.