Re:The Truth About Reddit
by purplelobster on Friday May 10, 2013 @12:25AM
(#5684621)
Of course 30-somethings can like robot godzilla movies, but I think the force with which reddit upvotes stuff like Avengers and that Godzilla movie is an indication that the demographics have shifted to high-schoolers and early college instead of college and older.
Maybe you're right about subreddits, but I still think it'll hurt the subcommunities to be associated with a larger more immature whole. Now if reddit was just search engine for forums and each forum was more independent, that would be different.
Once something gets as big as reddit it's probably difficult to call it a "community" in any real sense. It's a community in the same way that usenet (in it's entirety) is a community.
Front page stuff is going to naturally be things that appeals to the largest cross section of people, you see this on HN too to an extent. A blog post talking about a novel application of an obscure algorithm languishes at the bottom with 10 comments whilst "popular blogger bashes Windows 8" gets to the top with ~300 comments.
I like to think of subreddits more as an easier alternative to installing phpBB than as a part of the whole.