Hey new people and those thinking of joining, you do NOT need to sign up on huge servers!
You can follow and interact with people on any server from any server, the servers are connected.
It would really, really help the network right now if you could sign up on medium or small size servers. You will still be able to follow and interact with whoever you want, and the network as a whole will work much better.
A good safe place for beginners to find servers to join is https://joinmastodon.org/servers
FWIK (have learned so far)
The key is to share your full username (with server/namespace in it, e.g., [@]feditips[@]mstdn.social) and potential followers should verify this also.
Its different, but not so much really. I wouldn't assume that 'john.doe[@]evil.net' is the same as 'john.doe[@]notevil.net' are the same person. So too it goes with the 'verse.
Joining multiple servers won't help, may even further confuse friends and followers, the opposite of intended.