In Reddit's case this is made even more odious by its propensity for group-think and dogpiling so you can't even call it out once the liking for the product has taken hold.
Borrowing money almost always involves interest but there's a big difference between a government bond and an usury payday loan. Likewise I think that there is a big difference in critical thinking ability between the "reddit" blob of humanity and say, the US senate, subscribers, chemical engineering professionals, people on the Debian mailing list, etc, blobs of humanity. While the lowest common denominator in all groups may be similar I think the mean and medians are in very different places.