It is very intimidating. Especially at first. But you soon get used to it. Everything is a community within a community there. You pick and choose which you like best. The games forum for instance, there are are some game threads that have whole communities dedicated to them, who mostly post in those said threads, and then you start to form cliques.
It is VERY huge and it has too much info to digest all at once, so it's best to just pick your favorite part of SA and stick with that.