nini

In my opinion, what makes cohost feel more "formal" is the contrast between other social media that doesn't really reward effort posting. And also seeing other chosters making high effort chosts about subjects that they study using references citing articles and etc is a little bit intimidating..
For that I have 2 pages. This one is my main one where I interact with people and make high effort chosts. And the other one is where I make short chosts about whatever.

honestly i feel the opposite, i never post on mastodon anymore because everything felt so uptight. i throw out whatever here and no one's ever hassled me for my posts not being good enough

i think it really varies. cohost gives you the tools to make higher effort posts than twitter does, which people then use to write higher effort posts, which lead other people to feel pressured to write more high effort posts. on the other hand, i still see a lot of shitposts and other more low effort posts that spark joy in me. imo tho it’s not really all bad to have more high effort posts in the world. they tend to hold up longer