The timeline era, a notion from Luke Harris, resonates a lot:

I’m bored of what I call “the timeline era”. Scanning an unending stream of disconnected posts for topics of interest is no longer fun, I prefer deciding what to read based on titles, or topic-based discussion.

What Twitter always lacked, what Mastodon already lacks, is deep thought. The technology behind Mastodon is exciting, but the way it works, the timeline, the reposts, and how people use it are no different from Twitter. Mastodon is too close to Twitter to present a viable alternative.