Lemmy is so good right now for no particular reason
It's not the kids, not the lurkers, not the mods... y'all just nice people. Lemmy's got a good vibe going... or at least enough windows that we can close if the vibe gets shit.
The grasp I’m trying to get ahold of is where to locate where everyone jumped ship to? Is there a master list or do you just gotta hunt and hope for the best?
The instance you make your account on doesn't matter, as they're federated you can see and interact with posts from anywhere else.
You can check out the Lemmy community browser to see a list of the most visited communities, then search for them in https://lemmy.world/search to subscribe/post/comment. (note: beehaw.org communities arent accessible from lemmy.world, so ignore those)