Mastodon is a great example of pathetic web design. More than a few times has it completely failed to work for me at all just as in your case.
Every single instance I've used has presented me with the same warning: "To use the Mastodon web application, please enable JavaScript" as I have JS disabled by default. Please, PLEASE tell my why I can't see anything on the page without Javascript. What amazing cutting-edge Twitter-busting follower-thrusting technologies could Mastodon possibly be using that it needs me to turn on JS to see absolutely anything?
Mastodon uses the open protocol ActivityPub, which means you can access posts like these from many other clients than the servers web interface. If you dislike JavaScript, may I suggest 'Brutaldon' [0]? There is also the cli/tui client 'toot' [1], if you prefer to live in the terminal.
Using a client to access posts in the fediverse network do require that you have an account somewhere in the fediverse, though.
Every single instance I've used has presented me with the same warning: "To use the Mastodon web application, please enable JavaScript" as I have JS disabled by default. Please, PLEASE tell my why I can't see anything on the page without Javascript. What amazing cutting-edge Twitter-busting follower-thrusting technologies could Mastodon possibly be using that it needs me to turn on JS to see absolutely anything?