> there's the fact that the only thing discussed in those places is how terrible the thing they're trying to replace is.

If you only go check it after there is some major news that get people talking about it, then yes you'll probably end up seeing mostly this annoying meta-conversation around the Fediverse.

However, if you manage to stick around just a bit longer you will see that there is a tiny-but-growing number of people who are using Mastodon/Lemmy/Peertube "just" because they have found enough interesting people and conversation.

There is also nothing stopping you from taking initiative and starting the conversation around other, "better" topics. I made a habit of posting at least 3-5 links every day to Lemmy. You can always push out some introduction post on Mastodon with some relevant hashtags to see if you can help bootstrap a community, etc.

[0]: https://communick.news/u/rglullis?page=1&sort=New&view=Posts