Raised Roman Catholic. Broke away in high school. Went all-out atheists but explored options to see what might fit my world view. Eventually settled after a while on agnostic atheist (I don’t believe in a higher power but I don’t “know”). Also found that Zen Buddhism aligns pretty closely, but by this point I don’t care to put myself into a box anymore. Nothing is a perfect fit and people make assumptions
Similar to Mastodon, the different instances can represent single individuals, a small group of friends, a shared common interest, or host anything. It allows a “local” feed but can also connect to any part of the federated network. An instance might even choose to not broadcast to the larger federation at all.
These instances also spread out the workload of any single server by decentralizing the network, which allows Lemmy to grow without falling into a capitalist growth method.