I would describe it as “what if Tumblr decided to have the layout of Twitter?” The interface looks and feels like Twitter, but since there’s no algorithm people will post the most raw shit. My feed is one part guinea pig videos, one part OSR Dnd memes, one part people learning to code and sharing their early janky work with pride, and one part entirely from one queer anarchist TTRPG dev struggling with medical bills and the fucked USian Healthcare system.
The most trouble you’ll have is deciding which instance to settle down in. Self-hosting is really not reasonable for Mastodon, since the local feed is pretty important.