lemmy = reddit reposts + furry porn mastadon = nazibot reposts + furry porn

Is Lemmy inherently more “social” and Mastodon more “individual” media?

In my experience on Lemmy over the past few years, compared to many years more on diaspora or mastodon, yes.

The core function of lemmy, is following communities, either built around a topic, region, or anything else.

The core function of mastodon, is following people.

The only way to make microblogging tolerable, IMO is to follow "topic-based" accounts. I might be interested in what a person thinks about a topic, but I'm not interested in what food they ate that day.

There's also the issue of overwhelming feeds: not everyone can be a celebrity, and there's a limit to the number of people we can hold in our heads and follow, before our entire day is wrecked. I can't use most microblogging because its just too overwhelming, and I don't care about celebrities outside of a few writers or academics.

I'd say Lemmy is more interactive and Mastodon is more broadcast

You can use both for both lol.

Plenty of lemmy is people just yelling their takes, or pushing the links they want you to see.

Plenty of Mastodon is people filtering by the hashtags they care about and having long form conversations within those topics.

They both take a fire hose of federated data and sort it out for you in a similar fashion. One is just more horizontal and one is more vertical.

Mastodon is for kind middle-aged trekkies to hold forth about how to live a good life (it involves Linux, and stopping to look at the flowers)

Lemmy is for goblin-moders to vent about their mental health issues using memes

Yeah ever since it started hosting serious topics I’ve had the impression microblogging encourages ‘gotcha’ behavior and discourages meaningful discussion.

Less so when it first launched and was mostly used to follow what your favorite band was up to or watch your friend live tweet a south park episode.

Totally. Mastodon is like standing on a chair and shouting something at people. Lemmy is like a conversation in a group.

I think it depends on how you use them.

I spend a lot of time lurking on Lemmy. I read discussions. I don't post or comment much. There's no social element to that experience. (This is an indictment of me, not Lemmy.)

I just recently rejoined Mastodon, and there I find myself replying to people's posts and having short discussions even though I don't "know" anyone. It's not "community" at this stage, but it could become that if I continue using the platform that way. And when I made a post introducing myself, there were several comments offering direction toward finding "my people" (a.k.a. community) on that platform. It's just up to me to make it happen.

Mastodon is awkward to use for me. Filters and following give poor control. Lemmy gives me only what I want to see.

I like bluesky feeds and wish mastodon had them. Then it would be easier to use imo

No, both social. "Social media" means content is provided by the users, not the website proprietor.

It all filters through on my depression rectangle through Lemmy so it’s all the same to me. A shitpost comment is likely coming your way if you post here or there.