I love forums, still use them regularly and prefer them to social networks for many communication needs (specialized communities, focused questions, sharing sem

I love forums, still use them regularly and prefer them to social networks for many communication needs (specialized communities, focused questions, sharing semi-private things semi-anonymously, or sharing posts that take some work and I'd like to be preserved, for example). But I do understand the appeal of social networks like Twitter. Twitter has millions of users and you have a direct connection to each of them. You can look for something and instantly view conversations about that topic and participate in them. An event happens and you can see what people are saying about it, in real time. Forums don't give you any of that. The problem with Mastodon is that it doesn't quite get there. Federation (or at least, the way Mastodon implements it) has a lot of friction, and search is very limited. I really wanted to like it but I find it to be the worse of both worlds: neither the universality and immediacy of Twitter, nor the more intimate and archival nature of forums.