I feel like 75% of Mastodon are people talking about Linux. If you don’t care about Linux you feel alienated. I enjoy Mastodon and Lemmy, but the lack of more diverse subjects gets to me if I browse for too long.
Update: I took your advice and purchased a laptop for Linux, and now I care about it! Problem solved.
My issue when I add hashtags is my feed gets flooded with foreign language posts because mastodons language filter doesn’t apply to hashtags for some asinine reason.
Or spam. Lots and lots of spam.
Yeah I don’t use the home feed but I use the web advanced view with various hashtag searches and often have the same problem there. Luckily what I’m mostly interested in is visual, so language often doesn’t matter, but that’s obviously niche-specific. If actually following the tags isn’t working for you, then seeking out specific interesting people with methods like those couple I suggested becomes even more vital imo.