Wanted to comment about this part: I recently looked through my history and the only really upvoted posts were either agreeing with the viewpoint or making jokes like "Straight from the horse's mouth!" about a comment that was by a guy named thehorsesmouth.have noticed that in my ~30k karma, it's 99% jokes and one-liners
It's definitely the karma factor that turns it into an echo chamber. It's hard because all the users subscribe to subs that interest them, so of course on TV show subs, people are going to quote the show nonstop and get upvoted for simply repeating lines. And reddit loves meta humor. I completely understand new users over there not having any idea of what the hell is going on because the top comments are usually self referential. I don't have much of a karma score despite being a user for 3 years because I couldn't bring myself to play that game. Not saying you're wrong for doing it, it is fun and it's fun to watch if you're in on it. It just makes the actual interaction less valuable because it's a facade of social interaction. Sure, you might be talking with someone from across the globe, but when all you're doing is quoting Doctor Who or making Anchorman references, what's the point?