Back then to us smaller forums goers, Reddit was the new kid in the playground that we didn't like because somehow he was viewed as "cooler" than the other kids.
Even years after, when I had stopped posting on those PHP powered smaller forums I resisted creating a reddit account just because it was "reddit".
I would say, the smaller forums sites were a more tightly knitted group that I attended several meetups with. Reddit just never felt the same.
Baby boomers always tell me about seeing The Doors live in dive bar in NYC. I can say I used Reddit when it was written in Lisp. :-)