I get what you're saying, having just nuked my nearly 12 year old Reddit account yesterday. Things changed a lot, and I'd definitely say most of it was for the worse.
However, I don't know if this, for lack of a better term, superiority complex, is particularly helpful The fact is that early adopters and enthusiasts made Reddit a cool and useful platform, and so more and more normal began using it. The only way to prevent that from happening is to make a platform actively unappealing, and I wouldn't say that's exactly a good idea. The best thing, IMO, is to stay isolated from monetization incentives and ensure that communities of like-minded people can be formed and interact with each other in a healthy way, both normie and enthusiast.
I mean, if Reddit today magically became a non-profit, reduced the API fees to cover only costs, and eliminated active monetization schemes, that wouldn't suddenly revert the user base back to the way it was a decade ago. The presence of the "ignorant unthinking majority of the lowest common denominator who believe everything they're told" is not dependent on the pursuit of profit.
Most of the old internet platforms which failed were bought by corporations - sometimes to do just that, to shut it off.
Livejournal was bought by Russia to stop any dissent. Similarly twitter was bought to kill activism which for ultra rich was becoming an issue as it was undoing their lobbying. (forget all the drama over it, thats a smoke screen to hide real issue)
In the end, only when we leave gluttony and greed behind, and understand the full game - can we have a fair internet. Otherwise there are powerful people with power and money behind them who would like to keep controlling you for their benefit.
They stole the internet from the people and we have to take it back (media.kbin.social)