I think the author was right that its 4chan language. I wouldn't say its a product of being on Reddit. Besides /r/the_donald and /r/wallstreetbets/, I've only ever seen that kind of language on 4chan-specific subreddits like /r/greentext and /r/4chan.
I can say from my experience no it hasn't. You are forced to install iTunes for your computer to even be able to manipulate the device with other software, so even if you have MediaMonkey or an alternative music library you will need to install iTunes first. MediaMonkey works well generally, but as soon as there's an iOS update there's no guarantee you can transfer music because it can break something in the chain.
As for metadata, you still have to use 3rd party (e.g. mp3tag) which can be its own time-consuming headache--at least you can use RegEx.