Maybe we wouldn't have had Reddit, but I was perfectly content going to multiple phpBB boards when I was younger to discuss my hobbies.

Reddit always felt like a place to take from since it got lots of people by being centralized, but not really a place to contribute to unless you were contributing to the group think aspect of the community.

Communities specifically set up for answering questions or R&D were in my opinion the only valuable communities. Figuring out things or learning from the huge number of users was helpful, but it was never a fun place to just talk about any of my interests.