It’s not “instance tribalism”, it’s making sure the website you’re using isn’t just some dumb terminal, and preventing the network from collapsing down to “lemmy.world and some empty tributes”.

It’s creating a space that is resilient to network splits, and accepting the fact that, at some point down the road, network splits will happen.

It’s seeing the fediverse through a “Local+” lens, and encouraging people to treat their local site as meaningful. And rejecting the illusion that this is centralized social media.

Look for what you want on other sites. But there’s no reason to look off-site first, if what serves you is already hosted locally.