As I already said, the problem isn't that I don't "grok" Mastodon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33429036
It didn't take me that long to grok Twitter.
> It reads as the dismissal of someone who doesn't like new things and just wished it was like their old thing.
I've used many different social networks over the years: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, IRC, App Dot Net (I paid for ADN!), Micro.blog, now Mastodon, and others I can't remember the names of anymore. I even used dial-up BBSes back in the day! I think I'm reasonably experienced and can make an educated evaluation of a new one.
The interface is something I actually like better than the twitter one. I can actually see content from people I follow instead of weird "engaging" content. The website definitly is more usable than e.g. Instagram, which belongs to a multinational megacorp.
There is many clients but none of them seemed nightmarishly bad. The things the clients I tried offer work and are self explainatory.
The thing is: I tried mastodon years ago for a day and did also not grok it, but this had nothing to do with the UI, and everything with the people I followed and the instance I have been on. Then it is pretty much like twitter with multiple federates servers.
On your home page, click on the star icon in the upper right corner and choose 'See latest Tweets instead'.
I see the masses moving to Reddit. It'll be interesting to see their new registrations over the next couple of months.