Outside of those issues, which does make it worse, the massive amount of users and karma system creates perverse incentives that make any real discussion impossible. Anyone trying to actually engage in discussion is drowned out and the top comments are just people trying to input the right combination of words to make the internet points come out. And if you dare go slightly against the hive mind, your dog piled with people trying to virtue signal harder than everyone else to collect the points. I generally agree with the hive mind and I still find it completely insufferable and uninteresting.

It’s not even just a political thing, go to the guitar subreddit and try to suggest wood makes a difference in tone and see how indignantly you get attacked.

Sure you can find niche communities that are better if you really dig but in my experience, they tend to just fizzle out or get big and succumb to the site wide problems.

Reddit was way better 10 years ago and this place is already starting to kinda feel like that. I would be very happy if we could stay that way.