> I did manage to find a community by clicking "join," and arbitrarily picking one of the communities on the page (which were presented in random order on every page load). I was disoriented and didn't know what this community was

Well, to be honest, that part does sound exactly like reddit.

But people fall on reddit by links to a public page somewhere, avoiding the empty page problem. After a short time on their site, I still don't know if I can link to a comment in Lemmy or if I can browse a community.