This has been my experience as well when I switched over to Mastodon -- "random posts" such as questions, "off-topic" thoughts from me get more replies from peo

This has been my experience as well when I switched over to Mastodon -- "random posts" such as questions, "off-topic" thoughts from me get more replies from people I know well. However, this also meant that I had to see everyone else's "random posts". It's a trade-off. Personally, I went back to Twitter because the signal-to-noise ratio on Mastodon was too bad, and I use Telegram/Discord instead to communicate with friends privately.