For the guide, I needed an explanation on how to subscribe to local vs. not local communities. Also, the difference in subscribing to a federated community that is already linked to your instance, vs linking it the first time (by copy pasting it's address into the search bar). Especially note that you might have to wait a few minutes after searching it the first time, refresh, then search again to be able to sub. That was really confusing. Also that process doesn't seem to work at all if you're in jerboa, at least for me.

Also, how to sub in jerboa: you probably have to open the sidebar.

Those have been most confusing so far. I didn't really need a guide on "this is how federated systems work", as much as a step by step guide for finding and subscribing to communities of interest. Honestly, an mspaint/screenshot idiot's guide with "click here first" level instructions would go a really long way in helping people figure it out, then we could copypasta it easily as well.

For finding content, https://browse.feddit.de/ has come in handy.

Reddit ONLY does anything when they get bad press about it.

Why does this sound so accurate

Because it sounds so familiar. This is exactly Reddit's MO, and we've seen it play out dozens of times.