It’s reasonable for the early adopters who built the house to be salty when they get a flood of noobs tracking in mud on the clean carpet. But everyone’s a noob at some point in their digital life, so that’s why it’s important to try to take cues from the culture you are joining and be willing to learn. Don’t get insulted - just chill a little and try to engage with the community on its own merits. Give it a few weeks before you decide you know what it should be and what it needs.

I didn’t hear about lemmy until the reddit dustup so i’m a noob too. I picked my instance by going into a bunch of instances, looking at the communities list and applying to the one that had the most content that interested me. It’s not rocket science to find where you fit. If you can put together a couple coherent sentences, you shouldn’t fear a mild application question. Now i’m getting annoyed by the flood of subreddit dupes, pointless memes, reddit-centric chatter and such, so i imagine it’s way worse for the OGs. Reddit is dead. Let it die. Make better comunities, don’t resurrect the zombie corpses of subreddits that were just pointless repost karma farms anyway.

Things will settle down in a few weeks once we get into mid july, i reckon. People with short attention spans will complain and then wander off. People who find a better instance fit will shift, or even start new instances. Bugs will cause problems and get patched, and then there will be new bugs. There will be defederation drama. It’s all good. Don’t be insulted, settle in. Then in a few months or years when we get a fresh flood of inconsiderate noobs with “rebuilt the thing we left” energy, you get to be the OG yelling about all the mud on the carpet.

Make the thing and let it go. At least for a while. If it’s art, give it away. If it’s written or sung and you’ve got a copy, put it aside to rest for a while. It took me a while to realize the value to myself was in the creative work that takes place in the moment. The product that was the result was just a castoff, even though that’s all i had to show others. It’s okay for things to be not quite right. It’s okay to you as a creator to feel like you’re falling short of whatever artistic standard you set for yourself. Just make the thing. Then make another thing. The power and value is in the making. And eventually, if you’re stubborn enough, you won’t care if you love or hate the thing after you make it.