Unfortunately this idea tracks with a lot of online content. People who have time and energy to be extremely opinionated about things generally either don't have a lot else going on, or have direct personal experience that led to their strong views. As people get older and life gets busier people seem far more likely to just do whatever they need to get by and shut up about it.

Seriously, go look up some of the user demographics polls and analysis that was done against various subs on the old site. Most users are/were college age or younger even. Puts a lot of the "sillier" subs like relationshipadvice into context.