In addition to the mod drama and power trips and bullshit that happens in the subreddit system, the other problem with subreddits is anyone can submit to that specific category. This results in (1) spam and (2) an echo chamber and (3) lack of relationships between individual users.

This is why I encourage people to follow both tags and the users who frequent those tags so that your feed is full of things that interest you AND people who interest you. This allows your feed to have things you may not normally encounter and begin to get to know the users who share interests with you.

For example, I'm not very interested in music in general but because I follow people who are interested in things I enjoy and music, I get to see good music posts. Even though I would never browse or subscribe to /r/music or the 8000 genre music subreddits, I stay informed and consistently discover new things about music that I normally wouldn't. One example is this post by Owl that introduced me to something I would never actively seek out or typically enjoy. I would never be exposed to that on reddit.