Why did social media feeds evolve to display the most recent posts at the top? Have there been any attempts to introduce chat-like feeds that grow towards the bottom of the screen?

I decided to host my own single-user instance rather than re-use my old account at mastodon.social. My primary goal was to tie my identity to a domain I own, to help people verify it and to be in control of it, always. It was also a way to avoid choice paralysis related to choosing an existing instance and coming up with a handle. How much am I missing by not having a local timeline?