beyond the whole thing about it being like email having basically nothing to do with the UX it's also something that's just going to be confusing to the vast majority of people you try explaining it to. people don't know or care about how email works under the hood and they don't realize it's even possible to run your own email or have different email hosts. as far as the average person - the kind of person who actually needs fedi explained to them to understand - is concerned, email is just gmail and hotmail and some businesses have their own email names. you pick gmail or hotmail (or i guess outlook now) and that's it, those are the two options. all of the things about email that people try using as reference points to explain fedi are things that people dont even know about (or just dont care about) email. the only sort of person that analogy would actually work on is the sort of person who doesn't need it, because the people who actually care about that shit with email probably don't need fedi explained to them. if you've found the unicorn who selfhosts his email but is struggling to understand fedi, sure, go ahead and use that analogy, he's the one in a million it'll actually help for.