You probably more so mean the mains then. Of course they're circlejerks, the mains are mostly garbage that just gets upvoted by lord knows who. For example, /r/funny... half the shit on the frontpage of that subreddit doesn't make you laugh. Smaller communities, or communities that simply don't tolerate shitty posts or individuals, actually do exist on Reddit. /r/WwW, /r/askscience or /r/Astrophotography are good examples of that. You might run across the occasional wank reply in WwW, but people usually come right along and clear it all up. Generally speaking, a good rule is to find a subreddit that focuses on more specific topics. For whatever reason, that typically tends to get a better community. Just stay away from the mains in general. I get that reddit can be generalized as a circlejerk, but it's largely a collection of different communities. I'm not really linking you to the same crowd of people if I give you a link to both /r/movies, and /r/WwW.