I tried Mastodon for a couple of days back when it first caught on as the Twitter alternative. It's probably noteworthy that the whole Twitter experience has never appealed to me, and I've never had an account there. So I was mostly just curious about Mastodon.

I found it to be frustratingly opaque and I didn't stay.

Pretty much immediately after spez's AMA, I heard about kbin/lemmy and came and checked it out, and I basically haven't left since. This is now my home.

Admittedly, the biggest difference to me is likely that I'm already very familiar with forum structure. So I could pretty much entirely focus on learning the quirks of the fediverse, which didn't take long at all.

I suspect though that even if I was unfamiliar with forums, it still would've been easier to figure things out here, and by extension, that it has been easier for most people.

The fundamental difference as I see it is that forums work by first designating a place for discussion, then designating the topic(s) to be discussed there, and only then populating it with posters. So that means that right off the bat, people can go to specific places dedicated to their specific interests, then just see what's there. The complications of the fediverse can be sorted out later - they can engage pretty much immediately.

By contrast, a Twitter/Mastodon style place (I have no idea what the generic term for them might be) starts by allowing individuals to create accounts, then those individuals write posts, then those posts are (maybe) categorized in some fashion. So to somebody new to the site, it's just a bunch of people they likely know nothing about, and who knows what they have to say or what they're saying it about, so there's no particular reason to click on any one link over any other. Add in the complications inherent to the fediverse and the whole thing is just too complex to bother with.