[krapp]

Reddit is mainstream, and a part of HN culture defines itself as a bit elitist and anti-mainstream. Such people will often describe Reddit (and other forms of social media) as a cesspool of memes and low-quality content, and will sometimes accuse HN of "turning into Reddit" whenever they see a post or comment they deem of insufficient quality. That's common enough that it used to be mentioned in the guidelines as a "semi-noob delusion" to be avoided.

I think it's a mistake to compare HN to Reddit, however since HN is a single forum and Reddit, really, is a network of forums. There are subreddits with lower standards than here, but there are others with higher standards.

However, a lot of HN users also use Reddit (including, I suspect, a fair contingent of the "hipsters" I just mentioned) and they will have platform specific complaints, such as hating the new layout (which is objectively terrible) or this and that subreddit being banned or quarantined because the mods are out to censor this or that political group, etc. That's just Reddit drama spilling over to here, though.

Of course, YMMV. There's a lot of pro-Reddit sentiment as well, and people mention subreddits they frequent. And a lot of content from programming subreddits gets cross-posted here.