I got most of what Cohost was about within minutes of joining. It's like Tumblr with Myspace vibes.
By the time Mastodon actually allowed me to log in, it felt like a labyrinthine version of all the snobbiest parts of Reddit, kind of beaten into the shape of Twitter, but also with neither's convenience. Every step there takes seven steps to do a worse version of it. It's the "learn to code" screech meme come to life.
tl;dr: Mastodon sucks