Yeah, that behaviour's designed to counter spam and unwanted bots, but it does mean newbies need to be invited into a community. Meanwhile it's lonely talking into the void.
If you're happy posting your SSB ID publicly, I'll follow you, and that may help. Or you can use the #new-people tag if you want to introduce/announce yourself :)
You could connect to a pub — an automatically-friendly bot account; see a list at https://github.com/ssbc/ssb-server/wiki/Pub-Servers — scuttle.space seems to be active right now.
If you're happy posting your SSB ID publicly, I'll follow you, and that may help. Or you can use the #new-people tag if you want to introduce/announce yourself :)