Also, I've noticed anecdotally that the average age on Reddit seems to have dropped over the past couple years. It used to be early 20s, but now I'm seeing tons of comments from high school kids and younger whenever I dare step out of the few subreddits I still bother to read.
I won't even get into Reddit's more serious developing issues like the explosion of casual racism.
Heh. I call it "Family Guy Racism". Or the "it's okay, I voted for Obama" syndrome.
As someone who only really fits one of your criteria (college education), I evidently don't exist, as I have a good experience on reddit. They have large communities for not-stereotypical-geekery like fitness[1], martial arts[2], and home brewing[3].
Yes, the uncustomized "homepage of the internet" is a giant wad of time-wasting activity. To be honest, that's what the internet is to many people, especially during their work day.
[1] http://reddit.com/r/fitness [2] http://reddit.com/r/martialarts [3] http://reddit.com/r/homebrewing
lol?
The people who waste the most time upvoting, commenting, etc, are the ones who decide the editorial. So you end up with a front page comprised of stories that people who like wasting their time online agree with.
Well, not really "mass market" appeal, just appeal to the incredibly narrow and apparently homogeneous subslice of the world's population that fits into the reddit demographic.
If you're not aged 15-25, college-educated (or college-bound), left-wing, atheist, obsessively interested in every one of the typical geeky pursuits, and already intimately familiar with every one of several hundred reddit memes and running jokes, you're gonna have a bad time.
I'm not sure how many people there are among the world's seven billion people who fit into all those categories, but they all already have reddit accounts.