Anyone else feel hopelessly confused by the ML menu system?

I open it up, spend 2 minutes clearing those annoying notification indicators but have absolutely no idea what any of it means. There is just so much junk. What the hell is the voting thing? Or the purpose of the betting on teams? I guess its all designed to separate us from money but I would pay for a version of the game without all these annoying pointless events that I never get anything but temporary skins from.