As with many other things one can experience, I've had good and bad experiences. But I'm happy that I've had more good experiences than bad, at least.
Though my first time with the Fediverse was when I joined the main PixelFed instance a couple years ago, my first real attempt at being part of Fedi was when I joined a Mastodon instance back in October 2021. After getting a better understanding of how everything works, I looked to try other Fedi platforms.
I've tried Mastodon, Misskey, and Pleroma. My favorite platform so far is Pleroma, despite its reputation. I plan to host an Akkoma instance, a Pleroma fork, as it isn't developed by problematic people and makes improvements that the Pleroma devs won't implement.
Over these past few months, I've been able to sort of befriend some people. I'm glad that I can actually keep up with the news, drama, and internet meta again.
While I was able to befriend some people, I may have been able to befriend (or at least interact with) more people if my instance was able to federate properly. I plan on properly setting up an Akkoma instance in the near future.
The other bad thing is that there are so many instances whose only purpose is to make people mad, usually under the guise of freedom of speech. On the plus side, you don't have to see them whining about how we "ruin the Fediverse" if you just block their instances.