Git is designed for collaboration. Git's UI is absolutely unintuitive, especially coming from other version control software. But that's irrelevant. Everyone wants to use it because of the network effect.
In terms of _why_ the UI is unintuitive, I believe it's because it intentionally exposes its internal representation. Unlike its predecessors like subversion, Git has infinite flexibility in terms of the workflow that teams of people can adopt. But the flexibility comes at the cost of learning how to use a distributed graph of commits.
Personally, I never learned git by reading recipes of commands, like the OP. I only really grokked it by understanding how it works internally. This article helped me:
Git for Computer Scientists https://eagain.net/articles/git-for-computer-scientists/