Most communities I want to join show Pending after I click on the subscribe button.

24 hours later they are all still pending. What am I doing wrong? What is pending? Is this a bug?

My feed is garbage right now because its all memes and local sports teams which I do not care about at all.

I try to join something I do care about like Linux and it says pending. I have to logout to see interesting content but them I cant participate.

Is this the expected Lemmy experience?