Yeah I feel like there is a bit of 'people don't get it, cos they're can't handle freedom, they're sheeple, unlike me, I'm a free thinker, I can handle nostr' and not dealing with the real issue. I suspect and it's only a suspicion, that some people would actually be more comfortable with nostr only being the chatroom/telegram group it (sort of) is now. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

I'm not clever enough to know any answers to your relay questions lol. But I agree that Lists are very useful. Similarly you can find people via group/community membership. Nostrudel .ninja is great for this, profile pages are full of info and possiblities for discovering new users. It also has Community pages support which also lists members of groups. Worth digging around there.

So for example there's the Art community, you can look at active users there and you might find topics/threads to join in on or whatnot...