Liquorice (or even better, salted liquorice) and coffee.

Sounds alien, I know. You just gotta trust the process though.

I agree. Picking an instance was really difficult with all the options available. Also, to conciously pick an instance, you would first have to understand what they are and how Fediverse works, which is quite a lot to ask from a person who comes from a centralised social media platform. There are some hurdles that have to jumped, albeit they are quite low. Even low hurdles are still hurdles though and add to the effort which deters many people from joining.