As I understand it (admittedly as an outsider looking in, i.e. maybe wrongly!) people can go looking for and engaging with these emergent communities without any intention or need to follow all of the members manually, or even follow them at all because... hashtags maybe? Algorithm? Search terms?
4) "How do I meet new interesting people that I have something in common with and with whom I can start up a friendly acquaintanceship? How can I find new people to socialize with?" Again, if I understand how federation works correctly, on big instances you get exposed far, far more to the breadth of content in the Fediverse. On small instances, the Fediverse can feel shockingly deserted. On a big instance it can be hard *not* to meet people; on small instances, it can feel like where IS everybody?
5) "How do I find new entertaining people to follow to have parasocial relationships with?"
3/?
@kissane
As much as some old school Fediverse denizens don't like it, one of the reasons people enjoy social media is a chance to follow entertainers, educators, activists, and all sorts of people who reliably and frequently post good things to read. In following these accounts, there's not necessarily any intention of being buddies with these posters; their content is consumed as entertainment and/or enrichment.
It's not unreasonable for someone to want to be able to find that sort of appealing content here on the Fediverse. Hence the question, "Who's good to follow?" I think this is the primary thing being referred to when people say it's hard to find people on the Fediverse without an algorithm; I suspect when people say it's hard to discover people on the Fediverse without an algorithm, this is the use case they have in mind, with finding a scene the secondary use case.
4/n
@kissane
As much as some old school Fediverse denizens don't like it, one of the reasons people enjoy social media is a chance to follow entertainers, educators, activists, and all sorts of people who reliably and frequently post good things to read. In following these accounts, there's not necessarily any intention of being buddies with these posters; their content is consumed as entertainment and/or enrichment.