Yes. Old.reddit was a lifeline, but it was inevitable the current direction would lead to it's death.

Speaking of "Old" reddit. I recall there was a thread once where a "famous" redditor managed to game the system and take a thread through it's natural evolution entirely by themselves. It reached pretty high in /r/all. It looked like this:

Asked a question. Kept replying to it with genuine answers and arguments. Went on tangents, hijacked portions of it, even firing up Godwin's Law. This person created replies and sub arguments entirely solo. It was basically a entire self-generated thread exposing every direction a viral reddit post could go; I think the redditor was protesting upcoming changes.

Neat.