The common sentiment and the one I’ve been feeling is that lemmy overall feels pretty cool. There is an incredibly steep learning curve, but that cool feeling kind of keeps you motivated to try and figure things out.

Beyond simply finding an instance, the signing up process can seem a little confusing as well. Waiting for manual approvals on some instances can really kill the hype and lead to that initial pull being lost.

I completely understand why some instances would want to keep that signup process. But if the “top instances” all have that “wait period” people may, also understandably, not stick around. A seemingly opaque bureaucratic process in order to even be able to see if they like lemmy.