I truly empathize and understand you. It can be very confusing and time consuming. I'd say that you probably discovered it a bit too early, and felt overwhelmed.
Definitely agree with you that there shouldn't be external sites that we depend on in order to navigate Steemit. And that is exactly what I been also pointing out... and Discord seems to solve a lot of things that bugged me... But, when you're too new to Steemit, it's too much.