Buddy Rich and Reddit in the same post, with narrative significance! Magnifique! Salute. My take on Reddit: Perhaps the vastest encyclopedia of human ignorance ever assembled for easy viewing.
I'm a GenXer who was on Reddit long before TV journalists could explain to people what Reddit was. It used to be such a great place, with so many different subredddits for all hobbies and interests both innocent and obscure. Then I left it for years because life got in the way. Years later when I returned, it's no longer the same place. Reddit now is heavily censored, leading to it being a central headquarter for misinformation. And like all social media, the feel-good vibe from the beginning is gone. The culture and atmosphere is toxic. Also if you try to engage in serious conversations, at some point you realize you're talking to boys in his mid-teens who are morons and don't know jack yet. And often the top-voted comment are there to derail the topic to something else. I knew then sometimes one can't go back. You just gotta move forward and leave the past behind. The old Reddit I knew was long gone. The new Reddit? I left and bolted out of there.
“I haven’t had especially happy experiences with Reddit moderators, many of whom seem to have trained on a mix of Machiavelli, Kim Jong Un, and Dolores Umbridge.”
The same types of people control all of our institutions. Look forward to shorting this cesspool of a company.
I still use Reddit. For niche subjects -- hobbies, particular tech applications, local interest stuff -- the signal-to-noise ratio tends to be decent, and those subreddits can be very valuable, almost like a collection of topic-specific, old-style vBulletin style message boards.
For general discussion, though -- especially news and culture -- Reddit is mostly hot garbage.
A king CEO making a disproportional amount of money on walled gardens maintained by fervent, unpaid, unthinking diehards.
Sounds like a prototype for technofeudalism to me. The first fully reactionary social media, with a caste system to boot. And the drive for endless growth waters down communities, ups the need for enforcement of unruly masses that eventually become so large they can only unite over petty shared grievances. We need a reformation.
I personally don’t find Twitter to be all that different from Reddit. The detail text on Reddit posts play the same roll as retweeted content - they’re not meant to be read or examined in the slightest. Post titles, replies are the real meat and bones. Of course this can only lead to angry mobs, pure vitriol removed from context. The redditors - have not - read it. At least twitter somewhat limits account reach so communities don’t get oversaturated.
Google may be a juggernaut but people often type “Reddit” with their searches there to get more useful results. Otherwise you have to wade through endless SEO / AI garbage.
Reddit is a decent place to acquire knowledge that's held by a lot of humans (but perhaps not yourself). We recently had our first kid, and I've read a lot of "is newborn doing x concerning" threads over the past month and gotten value out of them. I'm also a big fan of the local restaurant subreddit for my city. I would not use it to acquire expertise about anything.
Reddit is the only social media platform I’ve ever bothered with. I actually like it for the narrow niches I use it for - mostly discussions of movies, travel, books, and above all, video games. I don’t think there’s even a second place out there for video games - because of Reddit I’ve long stopped even looking at other sites for reviews or information. Reddit is excellent and interesting on the topic; everything else now pretty much sucks.
Could the relevant search numbers be a little misleading? I use google to search for threads on Reddit (e.g: “Baldur’s Gate 3 best bard builds Reddit”).
And “a mix of Machiavelli, Kim Jong Un, and Dolores Umbridge“ is wonderfully evocative. :)
Everything about our new digital economy is so screwed up, only it ain't exactly new anymore.
It's like Wall Street doesn't learn, or ceased caring about red and black. See some of the VIP folks like the WeWork guy who lost a fortune, but still got VC to back his latest venture. Eventually someone's left holding the wet paper bag though. Doesn't ever seem to be the execs or early investors. If it were, the latter at least would stop throwing good money after bad.
I did have to look up Dolores Umbridge. and I've heard of Reddit, but never been on it. nobody I know really mentions it either.
The answer is to walk away from negativity, no matter where you find it, and know you did the right thing. Twitter is a fascist cesspool now, Facebook is an NRA cesspool now, Reddit and others will become the same thing just like many a forum has become in the last two years. This is what happens when haters are not held accountable and stir up the bottom of the bowl of the Earth. Look what the new owners of Discogs have done to their forums with people being ridiculed and openly attacked for their comments. Discogs of all places. There are no moderators anymore. None, and no way to complain about it on there.
Walk away from those websites that have become toxic, boycott them. Boycotting is the only means to hit these anarchic billionaires in the pocket. Participating on so many social media sites is not normal, it is the new un-normal.
Throughout the various stages of the “Monomyth” on the hero’s journey negative people will appear to test you. If you are able to maintain equanimity and not become reactive you will proceed to a higher place in your life. If you succumb to their negativity by becoming negative too, they win. And you lose. - Joseph Campbell
Great post! I resonate with the opinion you "borrowed". I've tried to enjoy, understand and empower Reddit, but to no avail. The other week I commented (on another social media platform) that Reddit was a "cesspool" with the odd scrap of actual information floating here and there.
I find that any real information or experiences are always stifled by mood-erators that enthusiastically over control content. Even after studying the 40 page manual that some subreddits employ as rules for posting, I'm still perplexed as to why I can't share a heartwarming story with some educational facts?! Or simply FACTS! lol!
It's very necessary to point out that mob mentality and ignorance is king in that kingdom of clowns. I've also seen completely scientifically stupid comments get upvoted and real facts demonized to downvote obscurity. It really is unsettling to think that humans are learning from that trash, but AI too? Sarah Connor save us all.
It seems that Reddit runs on listening to want you want to hear, and ignoring what you don't like. And in life, that's a pretty great way to stay ignorant and avoid learning how to grow.
Reddit is just McDonald's branding itself as Whole Foods.
What strikes me as particularly funny is that the fellow quoted might make a great Redditor, as the Dunning-Kreuger Effect has long since been debunked. ;-) Not to say he isn't entirely wrong.
I still use Reddit to access a very small amount (probably 7-8) of niche communities that align with my personal hobbies. I think it still works fine for that. I wouldn't use it for any other purpose. I think it's also useful to obtain a variety of inputs about specific information based on experiences people have had - it'd be unwise to take anything you read as a fact, but it can be useful to gain a consensus on the best plastic polishing compound in a specific use-case, for instance.
Most subreddits I follow are electronics and music based. What's more irritating to me is the sheer number of posts people make that could have been answered in 2 seconds with a Google search. I guess these people can figure out how to make a post on reddit, but they just can't figure out how to do the bare minimum of research to solve their problem before asking others on the internet about it. I'm all for people learning and teaching new skills, but it's really becoming an epidemic on there.
Edit: And I should clarify - I'm not talking about complex stuff. These posts are often something along the lines of showing a picture of a unit with the power cord not plugged in and then asking in the body of the post why it isn't working.
Was this a slip or am I missing something? Is it 60,000 as quoted from the filing or 20,000 moderators as used in the CEO cost analysis?
P.S. That CEO pay suggests Reddit could turn a profit simply by firing its CEO. I know it doesn't quite work that way, but I'll bet a lot of companies could be real powerhouses if they hired new top management off the street. If nothing else, the publicity value of a $100M lottery to run Reddit for a year would be a publicity bonanza.
Buddy Rich and Reddit in the same post, with narrative significance! Magnifique! Salute. My take on Reddit: Perhaps the vastest encyclopedia of human ignorance ever assembled for easy viewing.
I'm a GenXer who was on Reddit long before TV journalists could explain to people what Reddit was. It used to be such a great place, with so many different subredddits for all hobbies and interests both innocent and obscure. Then I left it for years because life got in the way. Years later when I returned, it's no longer the same place. Reddit now is heavily censored, leading to it being a central headquarter for misinformation. And like all social media, the feel-good vibe from the beginning is gone. The culture and atmosphere is toxic. Also if you try to engage in serious conversations, at some point you realize you're talking to boys in his mid-teens who are morons and don't know jack yet. And often the top-voted comment are there to derail the topic to something else. I knew then sometimes one can't go back. You just gotta move forward and leave the past behind. The old Reddit I knew was long gone. The new Reddit? I left and bolted out of there.
“I haven’t had especially happy experiences with Reddit moderators, many of whom seem to have trained on a mix of Machiavelli, Kim Jong Un, and Dolores Umbridge.”
The same types of people control all of our institutions. Look forward to shorting this cesspool of a company.
I still use Reddit. For niche subjects -- hobbies, particular tech applications, local interest stuff -- the signal-to-noise ratio tends to be decent, and those subreddits can be very valuable, almost like a collection of topic-specific, old-style vBulletin style message boards.
For general discussion, though -- especially news and culture -- Reddit is mostly hot garbage.
A king CEO making a disproportional amount of money on walled gardens maintained by fervent, unpaid, unthinking diehards.
Sounds like a prototype for technofeudalism to me. The first fully reactionary social media, with a caste system to boot. And the drive for endless growth waters down communities, ups the need for enforcement of unruly masses that eventually become so large they can only unite over petty shared grievances. We need a reformation.
I personally don’t find Twitter to be all that different from Reddit. The detail text on Reddit posts play the same roll as retweeted content - they’re not meant to be read or examined in the slightest. Post titles, replies are the real meat and bones. Of course this can only lead to angry mobs, pure vitriol removed from context. The redditors - have not - read it. At least twitter somewhat limits account reach so communities don’t get oversaturated.
Google may be a juggernaut but people often type “Reddit” with their searches there to get more useful results. Otherwise you have to wade through endless SEO / AI garbage.
I think this is the first time I've seen financial analysis complemented by Seinfeld holding forth on Buddy Rich.
Reddit is a decent place to acquire knowledge that's held by a lot of humans (but perhaps not yourself). We recently had our first kid, and I've read a lot of "is newborn doing x concerning" threads over the past month and gotten value out of them. I'm also a big fan of the local restaurant subreddit for my city. I would not use it to acquire expertise about anything.
This was interesting - thanks!
Reddit is the only social media platform I’ve ever bothered with. I actually like it for the narrow niches I use it for - mostly discussions of movies, travel, books, and above all, video games. I don’t think there’s even a second place out there for video games - because of Reddit I’ve long stopped even looking at other sites for reviews or information. Reddit is excellent and interesting on the topic; everything else now pretty much sucks.
Could the relevant search numbers be a little misleading? I use google to search for threads on Reddit (e.g: “Baldur’s Gate 3 best bard builds Reddit”).
And “a mix of Machiavelli, Kim Jong Un, and Dolores Umbridge“ is wonderfully evocative. :)
Everything about our new digital economy is so screwed up, only it ain't exactly new anymore.
It's like Wall Street doesn't learn, or ceased caring about red and black. See some of the VIP folks like the WeWork guy who lost a fortune, but still got VC to back his latest venture. Eventually someone's left holding the wet paper bag though. Doesn't ever seem to be the execs or early investors. If it were, the latter at least would stop throwing good money after bad.
I did have to look up Dolores Umbridge. and I've heard of Reddit, but never been on it. nobody I know really mentions it either.
The answer is to walk away from negativity, no matter where you find it, and know you did the right thing. Twitter is a fascist cesspool now, Facebook is an NRA cesspool now, Reddit and others will become the same thing just like many a forum has become in the last two years. This is what happens when haters are not held accountable and stir up the bottom of the bowl of the Earth. Look what the new owners of Discogs have done to their forums with people being ridiculed and openly attacked for their comments. Discogs of all places. There are no moderators anymore. None, and no way to complain about it on there.
Walk away from those websites that have become toxic, boycott them. Boycotting is the only means to hit these anarchic billionaires in the pocket. Participating on so many social media sites is not normal, it is the new un-normal.
Throughout the various stages of the “Monomyth” on the hero’s journey negative people will appear to test you. If you are able to maintain equanimity and not become reactive you will proceed to a higher place in your life. If you succumb to their negativity by becoming negative too, they win. And you lose. - Joseph Campbell
Great post! I resonate with the opinion you "borrowed". I've tried to enjoy, understand and empower Reddit, but to no avail. The other week I commented (on another social media platform) that Reddit was a "cesspool" with the odd scrap of actual information floating here and there.
I find that any real information or experiences are always stifled by mood-erators that enthusiastically over control content. Even after studying the 40 page manual that some subreddits employ as rules for posting, I'm still perplexed as to why I can't share a heartwarming story with some educational facts?! Or simply FACTS! lol!
It's very necessary to point out that mob mentality and ignorance is king in that kingdom of clowns. I've also seen completely scientifically stupid comments get upvoted and real facts demonized to downvote obscurity. It really is unsettling to think that humans are learning from that trash, but AI too? Sarah Connor save us all.
It seems that Reddit runs on listening to want you want to hear, and ignoring what you don't like. And in life, that's a pretty great way to stay ignorant and avoid learning how to grow.
Reddit is just McDonald's branding itself as Whole Foods.
Yep, Steve Huffman (the CEO) is a grifter of the first order.
What strikes me as particularly funny is that the fellow quoted might make a great Redditor, as the Dunning-Kreuger Effect has long since been debunked. ;-) Not to say he isn't entirely wrong.
I still use Reddit to access a very small amount (probably 7-8) of niche communities that align with my personal hobbies. I think it still works fine for that. I wouldn't use it for any other purpose. I think it's also useful to obtain a variety of inputs about specific information based on experiences people have had - it'd be unwise to take anything you read as a fact, but it can be useful to gain a consensus on the best plastic polishing compound in a specific use-case, for instance.
Most subreddits I follow are electronics and music based. What's more irritating to me is the sheer number of posts people make that could have been answered in 2 seconds with a Google search. I guess these people can figure out how to make a post on reddit, but they just can't figure out how to do the bare minimum of research to solve their problem before asking others on the internet about it. I'm all for people learning and teaching new skills, but it's really becoming an epidemic on there.
Edit: And I should clarify - I'm not talking about complex stuff. These posts are often something along the lines of showing a picture of a unit with the power cord not plugged in and then asking in the body of the post why it isn't working.
Was this a slip or am I missing something? Is it 60,000 as quoted from the filing or 20,000 moderators as used in the CEO cost analysis?
P.S. That CEO pay suggests Reddit could turn a profit simply by firing its CEO. I know it doesn't quite work that way, but I'll bet a lot of companies could be real powerhouses if they hired new top management off the street. If nothing else, the publicity value of a $100M lottery to run Reddit for a year would be a publicity bonanza.