I think we all have our answer now. This thread is finished.
As a redditor, I can confirm that such boards are absolutely deplorable. Unfortunately, there are a lot of smaller subreddits--and most of the defaults--that ruin the fun for everyone else on the site; while the boards listed above, /r/cringe's community (the content itself's not too bad, actually), /r/Atheism, and several other subreddits are pure cancer, others are great and appeal to whichever interests you have. Honestly, I kind of wish boards like the ones kaiserreich listed could be taken down, but since they can't, we might as well try to ignore them and go on our way.
As far as the decreasing age of redditors and the constant circlejerkery, this is all true... On defaults. As is the case with any internet community, the bigger the community, the more prone it is to younger members, immaturity, close-mindedness, circlejerkery, etc. This is MUCH better with smaller boards, though.
Admittedly, the karma system is a bit of a mess that focuses more on the user's popularity with the post than the content within. Fortunately, some subreddits have begun hiding comment karma (the real problem here) for at least an hour, preventing people from bandwagon voting. Boards that don't have this issue typically don't get as much into the popularity of the post (not always true, but still).
TL;DR: Reddit's definitely got problems and I understand why outsiders hate it so much, but most of these problems lie in the bigger groups. As for the others... well, no site's perfect, I guess.
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