It's a me problem alright, but I'm in no way unique in refusing to put up with the mountain of grief that the Gimp UX is.
> I've been using it productively for photo editing and web design for two decades+.
I know Gimp must have its share of long term users but they're a miracle to me and I don't know what to say to that. I suppose it's good people reading these threads who are open to giving Gimp a go see there are users for whom it's working out.
I personally learned Paint Shop Pro first, after baby steps of Mac/MS Paint. Later on didn't find Photoshop particularly intuitive... although liked 3.0 on the Mac. It's even worse now according to professional friends.
I've used many others over the years and never had a problem with basic to medium features. They all work roughly the same—WIMP. Point, click.
Gimp works similarly to every other graphics program, so using it for common tasks is not hard. It's not "full of grief." If you can't do it, you either never learned how to use a GUI program properly[1], proceed by rote, or refuse to consult the manual for more specific tasks.
For one thing, it's a helluva lot easier to learn than Blender, which has no chronic troll posts that I've seen.
[1] Not uncommon in web times. The original Apple HIGs might help.
Blender being harder to learn has pretty much zero to do with how great or poor the experience of using it is. On top of missing the point, you're also missing the connection between the lack "troll posts" and what the user experience is like.
But since you're muttering to yourself about troll posts and how it's really just a skills issue, I might as well go and mutter to myself about how great Gimp could be if it had users who had standards instead of being chronic enablers who just cheerfully whistle through the wart fair it is.
I've had my yearly share of discussing Gimp I think. I'll just keep to my routine: see an update, install it in hopes of finding it has changed, and quit it ten minutes later kicking myself for being dumb enough to allow myself to hope.