I was looking for hours for an NPC. I was like, "Where do I find these people?!"
I also though on mobile when it said "______ would like to settle down," there was real people wanting me to turn PvP off. XD So for a whole YEAR I thought NPCs were real people.
And then (once again on mobile) I saw a tip while the world was loading that said something like, "Build a house so an NPC can move in." And then it all clicked. NPCs weren't real people, I had to build a house, and the "______ would like to settle down" was NPCs trying to move in... I was dumb back in the day.
Ahh, that's nothing compared to the fact that I more, or less recently figured out how to attract npc's (after playing 134 hours), but when adding in walls I thought to myself "I could make these walls neat" so instead of just plastering them over each other, I segmented them on top of each other. After 30 tedious minutes of that grueling labor, and waiting for an hour for anyone, or anything to move in, I found out my homestead was still invalid due the walls being "missing," which should've been apparent to me earlier on when I couldn't even hang a portrait on them.
So I decided to just instead download a map with pre-fabricated accommodation's. I then proceeded in commiting to a mass exodus of all the items I've collected thus far, transferring them to my new steadfast, which meant everyone one of each material component, weapons, armors, miscellaneous item, potions from the base game and whatever else I haven't listed out already, including those added by the mods, (Thorium, Calamity, Spirit, Tremor, Omnir, etc) which took another hour, and more then afterwards as I realized the there weren't enough chests in my new home, and along with that of my old one combined to hold said items because I wanted to further reorganize the contents I planned to place within them.
I then decided that I've enough Terraria for the day, and went to make a pot tea and to watch some t.v. In short, you may have been dumb, but it seems that i'm completely clueless.