I always end up following someone who then overwhelm whatever feed

This has been my major issue with non-algorithmic feeds. There's always that pareto superminority who are responsible for the supermajority of what I see on my feed, and no real way to float up some posts from less prolific accounts.

I like to check in on the feeds from time to time but I never really clicked with the yelling into the void style of posting. Replying to people is also not always welcome (the contempt some people have for reply guys).

I really much prefer forum threads where you just stick to one topic at a time.

I use Mastodon if I want to follow specific users but that's it.

its an absurd format. it's not for conversation or information. just short format broadcast, so it's full of popularity contest obsessed bozos and "entrepenurial" grifters doing ads.

if it and all its clones were nuked, it would have no negative effect on any future aearch for resources, information, or culturally significant expression. when's the last time you found the answer to a query hosted on twitter? reddit blows but i still find valuable shit buried in some community.

that absolutely never happens with twitter

I just use browser bookmarks of userpages on xcancel etc. if I want to see what they're up to. I don't have or want accounts on those sites.

Yeah the lopsided posting habits of various users makes it hard to see all the posts from people you follow. There's always that one account posting 10 times an hour flooding out your feed.

This combined with not being able to filter out retweets makes Mastodon cumbersome and not very effective for its main purpose...keeping up with posts from specific people.

Say what you will about recommendation algorithms, they do at least prevent this type of thing from ruining your experience.