Hey buddy, welcome! I only just joined too. I'm kind of sick of the drama and superficiality of reddit. I guess at some point everything devolves into memes and quick one-liners to try to get some karma. It's a bit disheartening when you see somebody's thoughtful reply sitting with only a couple of points, while jokes making fun of how technical that comment is see hundreds of points and even guildings! It seems like this place has the focus on longer-form content, and longevity of discussions, which I think is ideal.
I saw a pun get upvoted into the thousands, gilded, and praised as "the best Reddit comment ever", and just thought "If this is the best that this site is ever going to have, should I even bother to stay here hoping for something more?" When the drama of this week started going down, I started looking elsewhere and found this place, and I really like it (not going to completely abandon Reddit at once, but just start moving over).
I used reddit for the small communities for news updates but it was incredibly discouraging to participate there. Then the whole mod protest by locking up subreddits made me realize that the entire administration (both admin and mods) is completely dumb. It's not fair that mods who claim the name for a subreddit first are untouchable and can ban anyone or any post they don't like. A few days ago I saw a mod remove a post because it was against the rules of posting "a fan submission" (a really neat fan video) but then someone else posted the exact same link and got to the front page but no action taken. That made me start my search for a better site. It's actually nice to see full, positive conversations in the comment section. Not to mention that reposting and karma whoring seems almost nonexistent on this site which means that there is actual content on this site. I'll will still use reddit for now until things pick up. I believe we will see more traffic as people seek better alternatives. The fact this site is struggling with the new load of users is a good sign.
I just made an account also, and couldn't agree with you more. If the comment didn't agree with the masses, you could forget about it. Popularity of comments or discussion had nothing to do with actual reasoning or how well a point of view was presented but rather what it stood behind.