I think the nerds (and I’m not using that as an insult) have kind of shot everyone in the foot by over-explaining the fediverse. I’ve yet to see a truly simple, concise, short explanation and how all this works is just kind of… a lot. It’s really neat, and I also get wordy when I’m excited about something so I totally get it (I mean, look at this comment. I get it lol). But when it takes more than a paragraph or two to explain what something is without even getting into how to navigate once you’re in, it’s intimidating for a lot of people. I had to watch YouTube videos to try to figure mastodon out, and still didn’t get my questions answered. It’s easier to find content I’m interested in on Lemmy and kbin, but after all the articles and chatter I’ve seen, I honestly expected it to be a lot more difficult. I was like, it’s social media. How hard can it be? And then I saw all the hype, I held off for a while before joining. The focus is about how instances work and whatnot, which IS really interesting and wonderful and neat, but the focus needs to shift a liiiittle bit toward telling people how to use the sites once they’re there, IMO.

Its almost like surfing, but on some sort of interconnected net

Similar experience, I saw people say beehaw lemmy and kbin, went to kbin because I found its name more aesthetically pleasing, made an account and dived in.