I don't know, all I know is hear say that xmr regularly hard forks. Not sure how that scales exactly. Surely it's working if that's what's happening. Is it because there are so few people running the infrastructure that they can all easily stay up to date or is there some communication layer built in that keeps everyone informed on how to stay on the consensus/heaviest chain? I'm curious.

After the fork height the new software rejects the old consensus rules by design. Upgrade or be left on a unsupported chain.

As with all other self-hosted software, if you want to be self-sovereign you need to keep somewhat up-to-date and update your tech every once in a while. There are thousands of nodes and god knows how many miners, so it seems like there are enough people out there that manage to do that. Also if you're running a node it tells you when there is a new version available. At least I'm pretty sure I saw that note in the logs of my node. The notion that everyone needs to run a node is just BS. The capable people should do it and should run infrastructure for their friends/family/community. Trust in small circles is normal and healthy and it's enough if one of them does it.