I have been a redditor for seven years and I can agree, to some extent, that reddit is kind of a more up-to-date version of a textboard.
One of the many problems with reddit though is that most of the users only care about the potential karma they can earn from a post and not about the value of the content itself. They are driven by points they cannot redeem for anything; karma points are literally just digital paper weights that mean nothing. In the seven years I've been there I have less than 300 karma points because I mostly just enjoy reading stuff that seems to have some value and thought behind it.
Youngsters today and even a lot of adults treat everything as a social contest to see who can become the most popular and it is fucking insane!
Reddit would truly shine if they took away points of any kind so there would not be an incentive to post shit content and also force everyone to be Anonymous so people would truly value their words.