Esperanto and Esperantists

Saluton! Let's ask ourselves a question: What is Esperanto exactly?

Esperanto is a language that was created by a Polish inventor and writer, L.L Zamenhof. As of now, there are very few native speakers of Esperanto, however the numbers of secondary speakers are climbing with the release of Duolingo's Esperanto course, and the popularity of some Youtubers such as Evildea.

Esperanto combines aspects of Latin-based languages, Slavic languages, and German to get much of it's vocabulary. As a native English speaker, a speaker of German, and a student of French, I can definitely see how the language combines aspects of th three languages that I speak.

Esperanto is often said to be one of the easiest languages in the world that are still alive. Many people wish to use Esperanto as a worldwide "lingua franca" of sorts. While I personally don't know whether that will ever happen, I do hope for it's usage to become more widespread.

What do you think of Esperanto? Do you speak it or know anybody who does speak it? Do you think that an artificial language holds the traits required to become an international lingua franca?

I set about learning it a few months ago and did find it very easy indeed, but it started to grate on me with how gendered it is; in that respect it's worse than any European language I can think of. It also started to lose its charm for me because it just seems a bit too simplistic. But perhaps I should explore it further at some point.