Dogs and neighbors come and go, though

Very helpful. I had a longer response typed out but lost it by clicking “next” instead of reply so I’ll try to paraphrase. Is there a way to see a listing of instances and their size?

Not sure I get having communities spread across instances, seems like it would be rife for duplication and too spread apart but perhaps that’s just the whole “fediverse” concept if I’m understanding that properly.

I created https://lemmy.world/c/paramore but I’m going to hold off on any other community creation until I understand things better and I’m confident I’ve found my home “country.”

I’m quite lost, and don’t think I fully understand the distributed nature of the various Lemmy instances (if I’m even using those words properly).

I’ll do it like Reddit 10 years ago… wander in, poke around, make a snarky comment or 4 and see where it goes.