it loads twice as fast, though, and doesn't prioritise images over information, so I see the upside, but I do think a lot of the commentary here is nostalgia and just what people are used to
This is, to me, the clincher. Is old reddit perfect? God no (i sometimes block certain elements to clean it up), but the information density is vastly better.
I read/scan quickly and don't care much about images. I can very quickly see if there's anything of interest on the page i'm on, and then move on to something else, or queue up a few comment threads to read through in other tabs. If there's an image, it's usually trivial to quickly zoom in to look at it rather than even bothering to load it again (hit or miss depending on quality).
It's obviously not perfect, but I don't think it's just nostalgia. I legit desire something fundamentally different that what new reddit is trying to offer. I'm looking for a website i wouldn't mind quickly browsing from the terminal using keyboard hotkeys, not something that I swipe forever on my phone with. Even on the phone though I prefer old reddit (was best on firefox for mobile with blockers but i'm back on apple so i need to look into my options.)
Someone like me just wants more text based/information dense screens that can be quickly navigated and then drilled into if i desire more information/content.
A very long time ago I was an avid slashdot reader (I had a 5 digit account long lost). I briefly went to Digh fir bit, and remember very early on visiting this "reddit" thing that was the new nerd thing.
I remember loading the page, browsing a bit and moving on because of the ugly unusable UI that it had (not even sure if it has subs at that time).
Fast forward all these years later, and I'm active on reddit but exclusively use the old.reddit version. The new one feels overloaded with stuff and my brain cant handle it.
As you very well say, it's mostly a matter of our brains getting used to it. Now I go to slashdot And their comments system seems so broken. When at the time it was pretty good.
The one thing I miss is the ability to quickly post as AnonymousCoward, instead of the throwaway account bullshit