It has NEVER been a real place.

I was there from day zero... to give some context I mailed spez his own source code when his server was misconfigured for VERBOSE error reporting. This was when he was trying to program a user registration system.

The very first conversations had on Reddit, and I'm including myself in this, were all squabbling about useless horseshit.

Reddit has always been a shitshow. Bacon, narwhals, and so forth to convince people that there's some kind of community there, when there is not and never has been.