The hometown sport teams is a great comparison and you're definitely right. I've never been the kinda person to play AC online, so I got overwhelmed/excited with the accessibility to items etc. in this forum. I ended up resetting my main town cause even if I was almost done... the new animals I got weren't cutting it. I like them, but there was this strange disconnection. Instead of getting to know new animals for weeks, I would have 5 new ones at the same time, so they were getting ignored.
I was only using my guide for a year and since Kabuki wasn't coming around, I joined to find him. But then I was giving up animals like Pippy and Lobo for animals I never considered before.
My first couple of days on here, I was aggressive cause I was under the impression that it would be super difficult to get anything because I assumed everyone would be as attached as I was, but then I realized there's actually like a market going on for the animals haha.