Gregory's ServerI'll never understand why Mastodon has that reputation (which sadly hurts it a lot when it's simply the better alternative to Twitter. Bluesky just added gifs, LOL and Threads wasn't even available in Europe for the longest time).
Maybe I've got bad memory or something but it was just like creating an account for any other website for me, except you have to chose your instance, which was a non-issue. Just pick social or your main interest.