It's definitely possible to actively use this place without wrapping your head around the how of it, but it's unfortunate that it's part of the experience, which is intimidating to new users. Hopefully Lemmy and Kbin become more mature and easier to use from the start without using your brain.

It's Lemmy specific now, but if https://lemmyverse.net/ adds a search feature, I think it'd work well since the instance finding and community finding features work well.