To play devil's advocate: If crotch shots are so very popular, perhaps the people who bemoan crotch shots- ostensibly on behalf of the community- have simply mistaken their own views for the views of the larger community?

I'm not sure if you read the post entirely, but this is not something that's new to reddit. Please read the ToR link in the post; this exact conversation is a popular discussion over there for a reason. As a community grows, it tends towards easy-to-consume content over interaction because it's much quicker to just open an image, click the upvote button, and move on with your life. This drowns out the rest of the content on the subreddit.

I don't care if pictures are posted, but for a long time, that has not been the way that this community has functioned. If it's changing, then fine; however, there's clear proof that this has happened before, and the only thing that really stopped the flood was the actual active users (i.e. the ones who actively post within the community; familar faces) speaking up saying something. And like last time, assuming that this post isn't just blanket downvoted for no reason and hidden because fuck me, it'll probably come down to a lot of active users versus people who mostly just lurk.

Please note that I'm seriously not trying to stir shit. I've used reddit since '08 on my main main account. I've seen subreddits devolve into memes and low-effort posting that drowned out, and eventually killed, the community and discussion that I originally joined those subs for. There's nothing necessarily wrong with easy-to-consume content every once in a while, and this subreddit is definitely not a shining example of deep discourse, but if people don't make an active effort to enforce some sort of standard against cheap, easy content, then that content is going to always rise to the top and bury everything else.

It's not terrible yet, granted. But that doesn't mean no-one shouldn't point out an obvious trend that has happened once and seems to be happening again. I'd rather have shitty advice posts that may at least generate some discussion than cheap, generic pictures all the time; the only discussion the latter produces is complaints (yeah, yeah -- irony) from people who get annoyed at them and contentless posts ("cute!", "you're hot!". etc.).

But, hey, maybe things are changing for good this time. Who knows? This sub has definitely grown a lot in the past year, and the LCD wants what it wants. No amount of complaining by regular users are going to stop that, I guess.