so I assumed someone would probably have subscribed before me

I think the community is very new, so there’s a decent chance you were the first. As to the overloading problem, it’s certainly possible. Lemmy.world has a ton of users, and while I know ruud is dedicating a lot of resources to your lemmy instance, it just may not be enough to keep performance great. There’s been a lot of reports of performance problems by both lemmy.world users and federation problems between .world and other lemmy instances, most likely from being overloaded. You might try setting up a secondary account on another instance if you’re inclined, can’t hurt. Then at least you’ll be able to compare. Mine is on sh.itjust.works and everything has been pretty decent for me since the latest software upgrade, just as a point of reference.

Sorry for my cluelessness, I’m new to the fediverse

No worries mate, we’re all new here. I’m still getting used to things too.