I have trouble remembering a time when it wasn't.

Reddit is sprawling. There are thousands of non-political subreddits. Yeah, if you are following the default feed and reading r/politics, or any of the drama subreddits, you are going to have a bad time.

Are you curious about what information is being sent through your house between 10KHz and 6GHz? Curious what your water meter is broadcasting to the neighborhood? https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/

Feel like some short videos of animals being adorable? https://www.reddit.com/r/aww/ (or any of the related subreddits: https://www.reddit.com/r/aww/wiki/relatedsubreddits/)

Want to find out about things in your city? eg, https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/

Into plants? https://www.reddit.com/r/plants/

Play guitar or are thinking about it? https://www.reddit.com/r/Guitar/

and in some modicum it’ll always have these communities but like was mentioned above: watching cat gifs, some drunk girl smashing a wine bottle, or the random police videos - those non-niche areas are at jeopardy… and good. It’s time they do their little IPO and we all move on to whatever emerges after the dust settles.

I see this response every time somebody criticizes reddit, and I think it matters little. Even when you get off the defaults, many of the niche interests are segmented into multiple subreddits due to infighting and conflicts. And beyond that, even if you find a peaceful sub, the whole site is overflowing in bot-driven karma farming that reposts the same things every few months, and of course, my least favorite: armchair experts. I participated in many subreddits on subjects that I'm a professional in and saw repeatedly how often speaking confidently was heralded more than speaking factually.

Don't even mention that, a small (<100k subs) youtube channel I follow has three different subreddits covering it, because of infighting and moderation issues.

I feel like all of Reddit has become political, even the niche forums. It’s all the same moaning and groaning

Seems like that is because politics itself has reached intractable enshittification, not necessarily Reddit. Reddit is more or less reflective of the internet writ large.

The problem is that politics enters every chat on Reddit regardless of the topic