> which chat room do I type some obscure message into to prove I read the rules in order for a bot to approve me and wait 15 minutes before getting into a welcome chat room where I now need to introduce myself?

This phase was really irritating, but luckily discord realised that was needed as a feature so made a first-party feature where you accept the rules / TOS for a given server.

The bots also got better, so usually you just need to respond with an emoji for automatic role assignment in discords where that matters too.