I made 1 "controversial" comment and I got perma-banned... this sucks.
...
Is Lemmy the answer?
That's really going to depend on you. What sort of "controversial" comment?
If you engage in ableist, racist, or LGBTQ-phobic commenting, you're going to have a bad time. Other than that sort of thing, you'll probably be fine, with some exceptions:
There are two Marxist-Leninist instances that can be problematic (mainly a minority of their users, tbf).
Some mods and instance admins can be ban-happy.
There's a larger than average population of neurodivergent people here so, that is sometimes a cause of the second item and miscommunication (we're trying!).
You may run into unexpected rules depending on where you're posting. Individual instances (kinda like "reddits") have server-wide policies. Communities (aka comms, the equivalent of a subreddit) usually also have their own policies. This means being aware of where you are posting and commenting (ie. don't expect shitting on communist ideals to go well on an M-L instance, even if the community is related to something else).
It's important to be aware that Unix Surrealism is the best comic in the Fediverse.
There are a lot of Linux users and tech nerds here. Don't be frightened if you find yourself getting a bit FLOSS-curious. We're generally happy to try to lend a hand to people who hit bumps at the beginning of their open-source journey.
If you're good with that stuff and can find out start a comm for Beetles discussions, there's a good chance that you'll have a good time.