'Karma seeking behavior' is a problem even on wholly uncontroversial subreddits. Shit like "my girlfriend baked me a cake with [subject of the subreddit on it]" is really uninteresting content after you've seen it for the thousandth time but gets upvoted pretty reliably. Reddit's system simply isn't an effective moderation system if you want to establish a thoughtful community because cheap pandering to the crowd is easier than finding or creating thoughtful content.