There were a lot more people on Twitter than pop culture celebrities.

In pretty much any field you can think of, some of its leading figures would be on there. Economics, urbanism, tech, astronomy, game developers, journalists, fan communities of essentially any creative work, communities for marginalized identities, pretty much any interest was well-represented there.

Yeah, I feel tabloid stuff gets pushed to me from everywhere, why should I go looking for more of that.

Garbage in, garbage out. I use(d) Twitter to follow a bunch of high profile Machine Learning and Software Engineering professionals, and my (non algorithmic) feed was rather useful and informative.