It feels like the activity is partaking of me rather than the reverse

Thanks for giving me these words to describe the feeling so well. I don’t feel interested and passionate… I feel consumed and dominated.

Now that I think about it, lots of words that describe focus have etymologies that feel appropriately sinister. Captivated, enthralled, enraptured, fascinated, bewitched, mesmerized, hooked - all related to being controlled against your will.

damn I actually remember seeing this when it was first posted to reddit

I think I’ll always prefer to maintain two accounts just for the flexibility, but if I could follow a stream of /c/ posts-only from my Mastodon, it would really simplify the process of sharing those posts to my mastodon folks.

Right now, unless I follow the firehose of an entire /c/, then sharing a post to Mastodon means I have to see it from my Lemmy account, copy the post link, rewrite the link to open on my Mastodon instance, open it, and then share it.

they’re gonna love that sweet, sweet liability

AKA scabs

Tried to follow a couple Lemmy communities from Mastodon, but it feeds you every post and comment, which gets unmanageable at any /c/ of reasonable size.

Is there a way that I can follow only the top-level posts from my Mastodon? Maybe I’m missing it.

I had the exact same experience as you. No idea why, but you aren’t alone.