Same. I like a forum-like style. I still think Twitter is a “shout to the void” and same to Mastodon. I like the… slower? Yeah slower, more thought out, and more interactive of this style. Like everything kinda has a purpose to exist.
I would actually recommend sticking to Fediverse to REDUCE the confusion that Mastodon has caused. If people referred to Mastodon as the Fediverse or even fediversetodon or something it may help. But calling it the Twitter alternative all the time has just said “screw twitter, it’s mastodon now!” and that’s where people don’t understand the potential it really has and then get confused. Keep referring all the fediverse sites as the fediverse and it can bring people to the smaller instances and not think that if they’re not on Lemmy or Kbin that they have to make some kind of choice on which “site” to join.
I found it rather easy to get signed up, just had to wait for the admin to actually approve the application. Otherwise it was pretty easy.
However, I do see a HUGE benefit to “load balancing” as you are mentioning. Where you sign up for a master server and then replicated to the others that are more applicable. I’m surprised this isn’t already a process as this is very common in gaming and proxied sites.
You can on Mastodon, you just export your data, delete your account, create new account on another instance and upload your data and it’s like what you said!
Classy