So what's up with BeeHaw?

hi there. I'm new. I've recently migrated from kbin.social (RIP) in the hopes of filling that big empty hole in my webs that reddit left after The Troubles.

First impressions after a week of use:

• Beehaw feels a little lonely. Not a lot of activity. Same posts on my subscriptions front page throughout the day with little movement on upvotes and comments. It's the summer in the north so maybe people have better things to do with their time, but I am wondering, does it pick up?
• Fewer users than kbin? It feels like there are smaller numbers on the Communities subscriptions than I'm used to on kbin. Granted, kbin was inundated with spammers and bot accounts over the last couple of months so those numbers are probably not as real as I'd like them to be, and I appreciate Beehaw's limits on new members by pushing a signup form and a review process. A social network needs users though.
• Subscribing across instances feels weird. Maybe it's the instance (lemmy.ca) but I tried following a couple of communities from there and my subscription was marked "Pending". Are we defederated?

So, my Ask is this: Do you have any recommendations for a newbie at Beehaw to make the most of my experience here? Are there any non-obvious Communities I should join? I'm looking for friends and fun. Where do?