I don’t know about Pixelfed but I’m pretty active on Mastodon and I get enough engagement there. I’d say it compares to Instagram like Lemmy compares to reddit.

Oh my GOD! He’s GORGEOUS!

I’d feel pissed off more than anything. I don’t know your situation obviously but my mother would be aggressively pushy like this and the best solution for me was to stop telling her shit about my life.

Things greatly improved when I did that.