To me, Reddit's the last bastion to find good conversation for people with many niche interests without going too crazy. (4chan is a bit too eccentric for my tastes)
I frequent the soccer, manga, headphones, metal, male fashion, thrifting, cooking and fitness subreddits.
No other forum let's me feel like a part of such a wide array of topics with discussion being the core focus. To be able to maintain anonymity while nuturing a community is incredibly hard, and Reddit had somehow managed it. The communities in Reddit are second to none. From meta jokes to entire sagas, Reddit in some ways reminded me of the times when I played Mmorpgs and joined guilds.
The removal of custom subreddit themes was where to me it started going wrong. I didn't care what they did with the popular subreddits and r/all, as long as they left the niche subreddits alone. But no, they had to interfere.
Reddit's forced UI change is to me a symptom of a greater problem. The idea that a company never stops growing. Sometimes you hit gold and the best decision is to stick with it.
I don't think any website offers the product Reddit does, and allows easily migration for entire communities without compromises. Thus, if the current web landscape stays the same, Reddit isn't going anywhere. But, it took weeks for Digg to die once Reddit came alive, and the introduction of a well moderated website for discussion may be all it takes for the Reddit exodus.
It is no surprise, that I find myself on HN typing this comment. An HN clone may just be where Reddit refugees find their calling.
Same. I'm a frequent reddit user and have almost no exposure to the "gamer" bits. Reddit, in my experience, is exactly what you make of it. For me, it's a DIY and craft forum.
To be fair, it isn't really a "forced" UI change, as you may disable it in the settings or use "old.reddit.com" as URL.
The best part is that the subs I lurk have banners that only appear in the redesigned view that instruct you to use old reddit because they rely on custom CSS for filtering and other things.
It's amazing that reddit management has thrown it's creators under a bus in search for monetization.
I'm at a point where memes in themselves have become a bit of an interest of study. Why do I enjoy the aforementioned meme-y subreddits more than others? I'd like to think it's because there's a certain creativity and unicity to them, but I can't be sure. Assuming I'm right about that, what is it that makes them work in a way that, say, /r/prequelmemes doesn't (anymore)?
And I guess more importantly, how did I get to the point where I'm asking questions that are multiple layers of 'meta', and how might this affect my general wellbeing?
(I suppose the pragmatic answer is that regardless of how meta it gets, reddit is probably best in moderation, like most things. And an interesting in the whole process is not inherently tied to how much time I spend actively consuming/participating)
Anyway, the userbase is so huge that even "smaller" subreddits has a decent amount of activity. Sure, video games and SF movies/TV is all you'll get browsing /r/all, but there's, e.g., /r/truefilm, /r/flicks, lots of music subreddits.
They can actually foster an internal community without getting Eternal Septembered once they break a certain size.
I've notice a number of questions on how to filter out all political content, so I suspect a lot of people are just trimming out the parts of reddit they don't care about.
The Video Game sphere takes up a huge chunk of it. Then many of the other subs are basically gamer adjacent. Many of those technology subs are just about building PCs and stuff, which is largely gaming related or correlated. Even a lot of the politics is invariably linked to Gamergate type stuff. The Entertainment section is all genre fiction, anime, etc. Stuff you would expect a gaming forum to focus on.
The dedicated meme parts of the site are gone. The interesting stuff that fits in no particular category are gone. If you had told me 4 years ago that one day I would come to miss the derivative rage comics and image macros in the face of the unrelenting stream of toxicity that the site would become I wouldn't have believed you.
Just look at this joke post https://external-preview.redd.it/dv9xRUyCUzzan5wZnVBCmmHIriH... from 6 years ago. It all seems so innocent compared to what it is now.