It all became so corporate and milquetoast - all that matters are ads and so that they don't appear near "controversial" content to not to loose revenue.
HN isn't much better with flagging of posts. The highwater mark of this was PG's heresy post being kept off the front page for 6 hours before dang made the post unflaggable. I would have loved to see the Monday meeting where he had to explain why that was needed.
Being honest I think religion is kinda hard-wired into the human brain and if it isn't the mystique kind like with Jesus or Allah then it (d)evolves into this kind of agno-atheistic fanaticism where some flavor of the year "problem" appears that these people obsess with. And this is coming from a long time atheist btw.
/r/homelab was interesting, now it's just pictures of people's setups
/r/garmin was interesting, now it's screenshots of people's VO2max stats
etc...
Repeat ad nauseam. Everything is bragging or showing off for fake internet points.
I don't know what is driving it but I think those posters really feel they're part of a community. The give gold, repeat the same tired jokes, and feel better. It's insane to me.
I find reddit super exciting as well, it's THE place to talk quickly with random english speakers and I wish that existed when I was a french kids pinging randos on ICQ...