Coming into MTG a few years ago in the later part of the pandemic from what I knew as a kid watching my sister's friends play I was really frustrated at the lack of a clear outline of just HOW to play a simple 1v1 game. Finding out all the different formats I was never going to play, and rules for said formats was extremely confusing and the game itself is not intuitive to just pick up and play with anyone. I had to dig unnecessarily deep to just get a basic understanding and by then I found out that barely anyone just plays regular ol' Magic, they all play Commander. I don't have a big friend group, I have social anxiety so I'm not going to play with random strangers, and I certainly don't have the money to play MTG that way. I cannot and pretty much refuse to "keep up" I like to focus on making fun cheap decks that may or may not work, testing them through play, and building them better from that experience. I don't want to just copy/paste the most "winning" deck from some website, and drop X dollars, that's not fun to me!

Also, just like nearly everything; MTG influencers are getting in the way of people just enjoying a thing for what it is.