Going insane trying to find a Domain register/host.

[WillPhanto1]

Man it's been a long time since I've been here, anyway.
I've been wanting to make my own website, and I've been looking around and researching various hosts and registers. At this point I'm ready to tear my god damn hair out. I've look at about 20+ hosts and not any closer to making a decision. Reviews on sites are difficult to trust. A lot of the review sites seem to be in the hosts' back pockets. The ones who aren't and have user reviews seem to be almost bi-polar. With some giving nothing but positives about a host (and coupon codes), while others will give negative almost horror story reviews of the same site. It's like web hosts pay people to post positive reviews of their own site, and bash to the competition to no end. Thus making getting a straight idea about an site nearly impossible.
I'm not a member of any tech forums, but I was hoping someone here might be web-host savvy and could give me some advice and suggest a couple places or share their experiences on such things.