Whenever I looked at Mastodon, it seemed cool technologically, but I couldn't really imagine anybody outside of the tech crowd using it. Is that an accurate perception?

LJ was cool because you had quite a diverse group using it. Artists, musicians, teenagers, etc.

This was before MySpace siphoned away the youth crowd, fifteen years ago or whenever it was. I wouldn't see them ever coming back to blogging. In fact I don't really see anybody returning to blogging.

(No disrespect meant to blogs. Blogs are awesome. That was a really good era for the internet.)