It was fine when there was three (some comments here say back when there was one…or two which I guess depends on joining point haha). But I personally found the balance between gold, silver, and platinum the sweet spot. Gold for really good posts, silver for posts that, while not as good as gold, were still pretty helpful/decent, platinum being the best of the three, where the post was so extraordinary it deserved more than gold.

When they added more rewards it removed the whole flow. All of them were the most worthless, cringworthy memes, and a lot of them were given out for literally free. To make things worse, they were often misused as well, there were a ton of posts marked with the cringe “wholesome” award that were very not wholesome because the users awarding didn’t have any of the other free awards and couldn’t pay.

Getting reddit gold beforehand was already having a perception of being “cringe” but I think the addition of the many “meme awards” only made things worse. I think it would have been better if a system was implemented where awards could have been voted upon to posts that truly deserved it or were considered “historic” in some way.