At first it was all about presenting data in an original looking way. In the end it was about pushing political ideas in your throat using a plain bar graph. It was not about sharing something interesting you found but about taking advantage of a captive audience.
Controversial opinion maybe, but /r/AskReddit, when they introduced the rule that you couldn’t put a story in the question. I absolutely LOVED reading whatever wild story someone had that prompted the question, and then reading the thread only if the story was interesting. Then they didn’t want that to be the point of the sub and that ruined the magic for me. So I left.
/r/PointlessStories filled that niche though, and it never decreased in quality.
That is how 90% of the posts in the sub ended up being the same couple questions repeated ad infinitum.
Was thinking between AskReddit and ama