I had no idea I wasn’t actually seeing the front page of everything

You need to give people the photon link: https://photon.lemmy.world/

Lemmy has multiple view options, photon is the one that looks the most/exactly like Reddit.

The other view options are; https://a.lemmy.world/ - Alexandrite UI https://photon.lemmy.world/ - Photon UI https://m.lemmy.world/ - Voyager mobile UI https://old.lemmy.world/ - A familiar UI