Considering askreddit was the first sub I personally noticed go from feeling like anywhere else online to become blatantly overrun with bots and astroturfing, feels like a chicken-or-the-egg situation.

Yeah, I thought the same thing as well. I've got no doubt it's gotten worse, but the place was never known for originality.

Nah, they used to mostly fit the context. Over the last few years when looking for some thing technical and got reddit memes in newer posts were just tossed in randomly like a five year old who just learned a slang term. Older posts had memes that fit the post and comments.