these days people crisscrossing between posts and boosts and following random people and entering random threads to start up their presence. There isn't a warmup phase as #fediverse don't offer that: if you're not getting involved you get no messages. That's a hard period, when regulars should keep repeat with extreme patience the expected #norms here, apart from the local server specific norms.
Some pepole think this can be skipped, but they're wrong (IMHO).