And how could it have been anything other than that, honestly? For most people with gold (as a reminder, it cost around $5/mo on average), it was something they got spontaneously and saw as a novelty. I think I was gifted it fewer than six times before silver and platinum were introduced. So in order to even see this sub, you needed a relatively rare and expensive award/subscription that more or less did fuck-all if you had an ad blocker. Then you needed to care enough to even go and check it out. Then you needed to care enough to participate. And was there any real difference between a redditor picked out of a hat and one with gold? Were they the "cream of the crop" for engaging conversation? Not really.

A lot of the time it was obtained for random, funny one-liners. Sometimes for a one-off, well-researched explainer on a topic that they're familiar with but which would be too specific for the gold subreddit. And for both of those, they would have gold for only a month and probably wouldn't have time to start actively participating in the sub knowing they'll be booted out in 30-ish days. Maybe they'll comment something in surprise at this discovery and never show up again.

Then you have those who had gold long-term: the karma farmers and the subscription-payers. What do the people willing to pay a subscription have in common? They've probably developed a curated enough sub list that they have more interesting things to read and comment on. And what do the karma farmers have in common? They're trying to min/max the hell out of the algorithm, not appeal to a loose collection of like 1000 people where their posts can't show up on /r/all literally no matter how popular they get.