As opposed to the 40-somethings on this board and their inane ramblings about how much they hate Apple and Facebook and any music made after they turned 20 is awful? :rolleyes:
I clicked on one of your links, and have the same initial impression as Vinyl Turnip. When I click on one of the Reddit topics, it displays a threaded discussion of a linked news story. The threaded replies are more like what you’ll find below Yahoo news stories than in a discussion forum. However, I didn’t create an account and sign in, so maybe there’s a Reddit members-only forum?
Reddit is a discussion forum. It is not a vBulletin-style forum, but it is still a discussion forum. The fact that it even lacks some of the graphical features the SDMB has and yet still manages to attract skrillions of younger users should be yet another point against the “the youth needs blinky sigs” hypothesis.
My guess (I’m open to evidence to the contrary) is that most of Cecil’s online fans first learned about him from reading various free “alternative” newsweeklies (like the Austin Chronicle) in the Eighties.
That explains the demographics of the SDMB regulars, why the regulars here tend to be very liberal (with rare exceptions like moi) AND rather old (I turn 52 this week, so that definitely includes me).
Readers of alternative newsweeklies are starting to skew older, just as regular newspaper readers have for a long time. Younger folk generally agree with Ghostbuster Egon, who said “Print is dead.” Hence, they never read the papers where Cecil’s column appears, and never get turned on to the web site.
What graphical features does this board have?
It has a nifty blue and yellow banner at the top of *every *page. 
No. You can post links to news stories and discuss them. You can also create a “self post” just containing text like you can with vBulletin. There’s a unified interface for both.
Smilies. Reddit has no smilies.
You know, there probably aren’t too many things that would qualify as patently asinine. This rule would certainly be one of them. I’m starting to get the picture of a repressed pit of bones covered by rotting flesh than the enlightened place Simple Linctus imagines to be frequenting.
And someone please comfort Capt. Ridley’s Shooting Party. Reddit may be the brain-child of Facebook and Twitter but it’s ok to be on there. No one’s perfect and it does have its uses.
The gray boxes and lines separating posts from each other are what I meant. Reddit lacks even that.
Also, smilies. And the little icon indicating whether the user is currently online or not.
I’ll be honest, I don’t know how to interpret this post. Why would I need comforting?
And different fonts, and different font sizes, and different colours for text.
I wasn’t feeling too well yesterday and did not highlight this quote. A candidate for best quote of this thread. What a remarkable list of intellectually challenging things. The SDMB, or great literature, etc… 
Your defense and promotion of Reddit seems to be a little fevered.
I don’t know what it’s on about, but I’ve just been ignoring it.
I think you mistake “fever” for general bemusement at the SDMB’s two firmly established conceits bubbling to the surface again: that a) all young people are retarded and b) the SDMB is some sui generis home to the best and brightest minds on the Internet.
To be fair, I’d bet if we were to judge by Reddit perhaps as many as half of young people would in fact come off as retarded. And yes, the SDMB certainly does not appear to be home of the best and brightest minds on the internet. When did it become so damn important to everyone to be the best and brightest? You can lose track of what that is supposed to mean.
Reddit also has no user avatars.
A few subreddits (subforums) offer “flair” to users. Often its a short text blurb, but sometimes it may be an image. The underlying CSS of subreddits can also be customized by their moderators.
A stock, uncustomized subreddit: Reddit - The heart of the internet
A slightly tweaked subreddit: Reddit - The heart of the internet
A clean Apple-themed subreddit: Reddit - The heart of the internet
A highly customized subreddit: Reddit - The heart of the internet
I have a couple of Wikipedia pages in tabs to read beyond the first few paragraphs still. Your quote is really strange though. The little I read made more sense.
A fair number of posters who joined while under the age of 25 have now been posting for 1/3rd or even 1/2 of their lives. I’m at 1/3rd myself.
Not keeping them away, but if a 20-something looked into a bar, for example, and the people were all dressed in suits, s/he would likely think “bor-ring” and move on. When I look into some forums (and bars, for that matter), there are so many animations, colors, and decorations that I can’t locate the posts without hunting. The Dope is like a very plain, no frills bar with only hard liquor served neat.