I don't know what stuff you are interested in, and yeah, it's not a platform with algorithms that will push stuff that the site thinks that you will like on you, so you'll have to do some work to find people you like. If you tried mastodon.social or some other humongous instance that doesn't really have a culture itself also it makes the whole thing more difficult, joining something like mastodon.art or hachyderm.io or some other one with an a bit more focused theme will usually be a bit better for getting started since your local feed will not be so random.
I don't know what stuff you are interested in, and yeah, it's not a platform with algorithms that will push stuff that the site thinks that you will like on you, so you'll have to do some work to find people you like. If you tried mastodon.social or some other humongous instance that doesn't really have a culture itself also it makes the whole thing more difficult, joining something like mastodon.art or hachyderm.io or some other one with an a bit more focused theme will usually be a bit better for getting started since your local feed will not be so random.