Maybe I'm in a reverse sub-bubble, but outside of the tech circles complaining, the protest still seems to be "what protest?"
My wife noticed day-1 of the protests (I know because she asked me for the TL;DR of WTF is happening) and she doesn't move in tech circles, and the subs she likes (liked?) are all pop-culture stuff. Pretty sure she's just not been using reddit since then, as all of what she cared about is gone. Other non-tech friends of mine also noticed within 24 hours of the protests starting, with similar "well, damn, guess I'll find somewhere else to waste time" reactions.
But, all of the people I know who use reddit use it only for a few subs, and hardly ever visit the site's front page except by accident. I don't know anyone who's like "I'll just go to the Reddit homepage and look for something interesting that it's decided to promote", though I'm sure such users exist (and may even be the majority, for all I know).
I mean, yeah, I thought I made that clear in my post. I see words to that effect, certainly.
And I was responding to your anecdote. So. Did you ask yourself these questions before posting, or was that different somehow?
maybe you're just really into meme/imgur post type stuff that doesn't have nearly the dedicated user base as other, more text-heavy subreddits?*
* this isn't a read; the example you gave (a picture of a weird looking fish) seems like the kind of content I described
This may be a case where certain people are more important than most people.
> looks from the outside like a bunch of dorks
It appears the "dorks" are the certain people who have been making Reddit work for most people.