In my experience, any subreddits with general appeal suffer from the same problem. Just find your niche/hobby subs and stick to them. Stay away from r/pics, news, etc...
You can still have tiny kings in small subs - mods with <10k members who let that "power" go to their heads - but it is more rare.
That’s pretty much what I figured as well, and the only way to get value from Reddit.
Unsub all the defaults and only stay in your bubble. Sad but it’s a dumpster fire otherwise.
Its actually scary how many people online seem to fit that description.
First, my partner is a highschool math teacher and in his casual surveys and discussions, most students don't use reddit: tiktok still dominates. The ones that do, mostly boys, just watch fight and war videos. Girls apparently are into makeup videos. News to me.
Second, I'm in my 50's and there's no way teenagers are interested in political discussions. Maybe they are, but the people I get in flame wars with speak and act like angry adults: their rages and complaints would require too much effort for a teenager to fabricate.
I think the truth is Reddit is mostly adults but for some reason lots of adults want to believe it is just teenagers, possibly because we act like children online sometimes?
pretty much describes how I used reddit as a teenager.
There are the default front-page subreddits, that attract "the masses."
Then there's everything else, and each of those subreddits has its own moderation team and culture. They range from trash to gold. Generalizing about these is almost always off-base.
Unless you're on /r/teenagers, then a startlingly large percentage of commenters are much much older and are probably grooming.