If you never curated your reddit experience, I could see how you might have this attitude.
I won't deny that /r/popular and /r/all are rage inducing dumpster fires. But if you create an account and join subreddits, just going to https://www.reddit.com/ takes you to a selection just from those subreddits. And there are a large number of wholesome, nurturing, even useful subreddits.
In some respects, it is like Usenet used to be.
> never all that beneficial.
Google would disagree, after the recent blackouts. There's a lot of useful information going on in various subreddits - to the point that some posts on specific topics compete for stack answers in search rankings! Hell, I've found more useful Common Lisp resources in the Lisp subreddits than I ever found on HN, and better solutions to (some) problems than on stack.