I'm just going to address the elephant in the room: Twitter, before Elon's takeover, was a crypto-obsessed political echo chamber. You cannot get an "alternative" to it because people refuse to acknowledge that Twitter was never all that great in the first place. You can never go home, as they say, and that applies to old versions of social media just as well. You will never, ever have an alternative where all your friends and role-models post on the same network. It just doesn't happen, ever. Not with Twitter, and not with a Twitter alternative - your expectations aren't realistic, and so you're bound to be disappointed until your outlook changes.
If you're willing to adjust your expectations and use a smaller network, you can still enjoy social media. You just have to stop treating it as an attention-stealing exercise where you're in competition with your peers to get noticed by "the world". Platforms like Mastodon are great, as long as you don't rely on likes and reposts for dopamine.
If you're willing to adjust your expectations and use a smaller network, you can still enjoy social media. You just have to stop treating it as an attention-stealing exercise where you're in competition with your peers to get noticed by "the world". Platforms like Mastodon are great, as long as you don't rely on likes and reposts for dopamine.