We’re not entirely rational creatures so even though logically we may know it won’t be the finished product, it can still massively impact how something is perceived. First impressions can always make a big difference no matter how much you try to rationalise them away.
I don’t know what tears of the kingdom is, to be honest, so I can’t comment about that.
I have the same problem as you with mastodon, I’m interested in topics not in people so the format just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
I’ve had very limited success with following hashtags, it sounds like a neat idea, but I’ve not found enough hashtags that I’m interested in with enough activity to make it worthwhile.
The nature of it also makes it more superficial - it’s short comments and posts on a topic rather than more in depth discussion.
In the end, I think mastodon is a really neat replacement for twitter - but I never had a twitter account for a reason, and those reasons are still there with mastodon, for me at least.