I know exactly what you mean. Personally, I'm posting a lot about #cars and #martialarts, two subjects which I know aren't super popular here but I myself am comfortable with. However, because I feel the conversations here are more often than not dense with quality insight, I'm posting stuff that I believe is of good quality that people will appreciate.
I had no idea r/personalfinance was lacking. What's so bad about it?
It sucks. I can pretty much summarize the place into two topics: "I am a broke high school/college graduate with no money, what do?" and "I have a job offer of 100k in Low Cost of Living or 150k in High Cost of Living. Please help me, which should I take?" And every other response seems to be written in the eyes of an autistic person who makes 200k and views making friends and enjoying life as wastes of time. You shouldn't be racking up debts and living irresponsibly, but your 20s should feature at least a little bit of fun. You're never going to have that youth and freedom again. I would never ever take financial advice from reddit. There is no silver bullet for wealth. Not really sure what that sub could really offer anyone.
In the early days it was all blogspam. As reddit grew, all the finance nerds slowly gravitated there and it was pretty awesome. Good articles, decent discussion. Most people were interested enough to be pretty self educated. As the sub kept growing, more and more people stopped by for easy fixes to their problem and it stopped being a haven for enthusiasts and more a very basic how to. That's fine, I didn't mind paying it forward and helping newbies. Then it became a default sub, and that was the death of reason. New people flooded in, and the educated couldn't keep up. The people who had been there before started parroting old advice without actually understanding it, and the subreddit became so oversimplified it started giving out terrible advice. But because the beginners out numbered the veterans, the advice that was listened to was usually the most simple, stated in the most assertive way. Finance doesn't usually work like that. To give a concrete example, anyone who asks about saving is parroted the same advice about using a Roth and 401k. That's usually terrible advice for young people. They need to save for more then just retirement, all their major life expenses are in front of them (wedding, house, ect). As a result, the frequency of people needing to borrow from their 401k has gone up (terrible idea! don't do that) and now I see more and more posts from people who have screwed themselves over by listening to the sub. Sorry for the rant, it's really frustrating watching this happen but having no way to stop it.
Wow. Yeah. That's actually awful. in that case, I look forward to seeing what you bring here. I might even pop by with a random question a time or two.