I guess it is better to spend some little time cleaning up your existing install than doing a fresh one. From what you describe, you just have some leftover configuration files you can delete.
Fresh installs is needed when you messed up your current install with broken packages or missing ones or missing configuration and you just don’t know how to clean it up.
So as long as you can clean up your install, just clean it.
You can use a black theme. Look at gnome-look.org
You can also reverse engineer them to look how they make the theme blank and apply it to adwaita. This is not complicated as themes are mostly CSS.
Edit to add that you can chat with people from open deskttop (gnome look) to ask your question: https://chat.opendesktop.org/#/welcome
Maybe you could delete Reddit. But you can self-host your own lemmy instance in addition to you website. It does not hurt to have your own website in addition to social media.
However, you cannot host a lemmy on github pages.
If you watch closely how most of them are standing and holding the platform above them I doubt they are holding any weight. Most of them have hands crossed, elbows unlocked, or bear the wiight woth neck (heads down) so they are holding nothing. Also some levels are clearly not holding anything from the floor above. So since It can’t stand floating, some kind of platform is involved.
My conclusion is they are just standing in an aseathic way over a platform and not carrying any wight.