Why I do not automatically accept everyone who requests to join
Every week, I get some requests to join the community that are obviously spam. Case in points: Somebody who says they teach people to do faceless YouTube channels. Does that honestly sound like somebody who's one of us? Absolutely not! And so I protect you as well as I can from things like this by manually approving new member requests. It may mean someone's excitement is damping for a little bit until they get approved, and it also means that some of these asinine spammers aren't going to be coming in here to bother us. This is a sanctuary space!