@kq use filte... No I'm kidding. You're right there on both points. Only two days ago I couldn't handle the space rocket exploding and everyone taking their turn to take a piss on that fire.
To me Mastodon has been mostly (mostly!) Ok because I ignored the main feed and just used the columns I built. That way I mostly see only the specific interests and not the vents.
MB is becoming more of a grooming issue slowly because there are a lot of folks I follow, and it's slowly becoming more "noise," so I unfollow generously and try to stick to RSS (a long piece has a better chance of having original content), and keep a skeleton of interesting folks here.
My opinion for what it's worth - don't do anything drastic, yet. Just turn it off for a bit and take a break. An evening, a weekend, a week.
Focus on one or two (at most) topics you want to focus on these days and put up filters to pull that instead. Then spend some time trimming that further (who posts more than once a month? Who have several interesting posts?)
I find that people who post about three things that interest me (say exercise, photography, writing) are precious and are worth following. Otherwise, it's just a good post, I comment and move on.
I don't always follow my own rules but in general these help me some.