[dejb]

I'd hypothesize from your post than your experience with drupal is relatively limited.

If by 'lot of crap' you are referring to things like a user account system with a detailed permissions, a flexible taxonomy system (categories, tags..) or perhaps the wide rage of modules that are available then I'd have to disagree. I personally have reinvented the wheel enough times to believe that coding up yet another user account system isn't an efficient use of my time.

I'm not sure what your problem is. But I say Drupal is a viable solution to a high percentage of web site requirements including many social sites.