I wouldn’t call the fediverse particularly “small”, there are over 1000 Lemmy instances, with the total fediverse clocking at over 3 million active users (around 12 million accounts), and while the interactions on the different projects are not all the same, I think there is a lot of options to choose from.
And technically… Lemmy doesn’t support much of it (yet), but all projects can interact with each other.
Some tools may be still missing, but I think it should be possible to find a comfy place for everyone.
I understand what you are saying, but there is no denying that most people on Lemmy are just kind of browsing across instances and not paying particular attention to where they are. The default setup is not your subscriptions or local instance, so it’s to be expected. As a result there is a bleeding effect, for lack of a better term, and a general culture that is emerging across most of the posts any one would see on a given day. And unfortunately, the tone of these conversations has become increasingly heated lately. Or at least it seems that way to me.
In the grand scheme of things, 3,000,000 active users is not that large. Only a fraction of them are posting and engaging in the comment sections. I regularly see the same people almost every day in comments. There are some instances where it’s literally the same 15 to 20 people basically carrying on all conversation while thousands look on. 
I wouldn’t call the fediverse particularly “small”, there are over 1000 Lemmy instances, with the total fediverse clocking at over 3 million active users (around 12 million accounts), and while the interactions on the different projects are not all the same, I think there is a lot of options to choose from.
And technically… Lemmy doesn’t support much of it (yet), but all projects can interact with each other.
Some tools may be still missing, but I think it should be possible to find a comfy place for everyone.
I understand what you are saying, but there is no denying that most people on Lemmy are just kind of browsing across instances and not paying particular attention to where they are. The default setup is not your subscriptions or local instance, so it’s to be expected. As a result there is a bleeding effect, for lack of a better term, and a general culture that is emerging across most of the posts any one would see on a given day. And unfortunately, the tone of these conversations has become increasingly heated lately. Or at least it seems that way to me.
In the grand scheme of things, 3,000,000 active users is not that large. Only a fraction of them are posting and engaging in the comment sections. I regularly see the same people almost every day in comments. There are some instances where it’s literally the same 15 to 20 people basically carrying on all conversation while thousands look on.