For the uninitiated, you can do by changing the URL you're visiting from reddit.com to old.reddit.com. If you have an account, you can also set this as a preference.
Reddit doesn't hate their users, there's simply a financial incentive to convert them over to the new site, either because it's easier to serve ads, or they need to justify to management that millions of dollars of work was worth it. I'd be willing to bet most unpopular UX/redesign decisions can be traced back to some financial incentive.