Agree, not the way I expected things to end, but now we're here at lemmy. Tried browsing reddit earlier without rif and stopped after 1 page. It's insanely ad heavy and clunky...
The next best way to browse reddit is through a teddit front end. The main one is teddit.net, but today I learned there is another one at reddit.lol, along with various others. You can't log in or vote, but if you happen to get linked to Reddit, using one of the teddit sites will let you avoid the ads and will provide a streamlined page.