Reddit tended to be best where it had stolen better communities from the old web.

For example, r/Excel was always a stunningly chill place to get help with MS Excel. But notice that the community was/is tightly focused on a subject, that subject would have objectively correct answers to any questions about it, and the mods could politely but firmly discourage any spicier conversations as off-topic. You can keep that sort of place decent almost indefinitely.

Such communities would have been their own little message board before Reddit came along and hoovered them all up.

Likewise with all the other subreddits that were famously full of answers, ones you never had heard of. Just the other day I googled a question about some random piece of cable I had in my hand and guess who had answered it 4 years ago? Yeah. Those little communities tend to be really solid. They never get that big, either. You can't just fuck around in them, you have to stay on topic and the average user hates that.

But Reddit turns into a wretched, life-draining parasitic monster in any form where the public feels like they have the right to run their mouths and chatter. So, most of Reddit, really. Anywhere that gives the average schmuck a place to vent will degenerate, rapidly, usually toward an abusive groupthink. It's just populism, then, and a textbook answer to why that's bad.

It's the bane of all social media. I don't think people are generally that shitty. I've decided that social media, including Reddit, just empowers small, loud minorities of miserable, exhausting people who have nigh-fascist opinions on every single thing, and as soon as the normal-ass people see that they've joined the chat, the normal-ass people all vanish, overnight, leaving behind only shitbags who love attention, or believe they have a right to it, at everyone else's expense. There's no getting rid of them when they show up, you can only get rid of you. I hope you weren't having a nice time, because it's over now, time to move on.

Reddit always had its great little subreddits full of truly precious answers as a counterweight to all that. It would appear that they were the only thing of value that Reddit ever had, too.

Lemmy doesn't really have that. It looks like the most obnoxious parts of Reddit came here, so, you know, every computer problem is solved by installing Linux, and other mouthfuls of that flavor. Then somebody opened the floodgates and now you're arguing with Commies about every political thing. Meanwhile, no great little subLemmies full of answers for your obscure questions exist to make up for it.

Like you said, it was super chill for a month, but then, yeah. It's kinda same shit different day. It's reminding me that I've decided to view social media as a vice, almost exactly like smoking, and changing cigarette brands does not solve the problem.

Especially the downvote trolls.