Looking for fun Minecraft servers to join

I totally get what you mean about the struggle of finding active servers! It can be a real hit-or-miss experience, even with the best intentions. When I'm looking for new places to play, I usually check out a good Minecraft server list. I recently found https://minecraft-servers.co/ which has a great list of Minecraft servers. You can find many popular servers there, some with thousands of players online at any given time, which definitely helps with the "lively" feel you're looking for. It's super easy to browse and copy a server IP to join through Minecraft multiplayer. They even rank them, so you can easily see the servers with the most players.