You can participate in only certain subreddits, but you'll still get a lot of trolls. As far as I'm aware, this is more of an issue in trans and feminism related subreddits. This is the reason for having certain "safe spaces" like r/creepypms. Outright banning people who don't go along with the topic is far easier than policing discussions.

Brigading in reddit has always been an issue and it's likely not going away for a very long time. That's also a cause of inter-subreddit mixing that can lead to abuse.

You're mostly correct that if you stick to the smaller and more moderated communities, you'll avoid a lot of the crud.

Edit: and to be further on topic, the r/opiates subreddit also gets a lot of outsiders going in and flinging abuse at the users there.

parent explicitly mentions people making racial jokes and mentioning racial stereotypes. This occurs even in every large subreddit, well-behaved or not. They likely aren't even malicious on the part of the people who say them, but nevertheless, they are damaging comments to make, and I wouldn't blame people for leaving reddit because of them.

that said there are plenty of small communities that are pleasant, sure. But some people would rather go elsewhere than take the time and effort to curate their subs, and that's perfectly reasonable.

Indian user here. I avoid majority of Reddit's default sub because of this reason. Just yesterday, I accidentally came across on comment in /r/askreddit where they openly called Indian men as vulgar and rapey. When another Indian user questioned it, he was downvoted heavily. Honestly, 12 hours later, I am still angry. I think I will leave Reddit for good this time.

I can relate man. It's soul crushing and hard to accept you just have to not participate to protect your sanity.

right, exactly! this kind of casual discrimination that people pass off as a joke. Obviously not a reddit-exclusive phenomenon; it's commonplace IRL, but it's especially noticeable in large subs where people are encouraged to make pandering, low-effort comments that appeal to the lowest common denominator

What counts as a large subreddit? I mostly go to r/boardgames and r/javascript and r/webdev and I can't remember a single racial joke/stereotype. Maybe these are small subreddits or I'm just not looking at the "right" posts?

I guess I mostly had the defaults and other similarly sized subs in mind. But to me a subreddit is large and low quality when crowd-pleasing memes and joke comments bury thoughtful discussions.