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Reddit is like a huge shopping mall, lots of shops for all kinds of interests in one place. In such a mall, it doesn't matter if you only ever shop at that one
by TenOhms 10y ago
Reddit is like a huge shopping mall, lots of shops for all kinds of interests in one place. In such a mall, it doesn't matter if you only ever shop at that one store you like, you will always encounter the quirks of other shoppers at the same mall.
HN is like an upscale department store hidden in a well manicured industrial park. Most visitors, I imagine, are there to enhance their self actualization, not just follow the latest fads in fashion and things to do on a Saturday.
When I first stumbled across HN years ago I was intrigued how vibrant this little-known community was. I noticed that the quality of posts here was much higher than any other tech forum I had seen. People were much more serious when it suited the topic and humor had real effort behind it when humor was called for.
And when I first noticed a silly Reddit-style meme, the Meme Active Defense (MAD) system kicked in and the poster got down-voted to oblivion, told to return to Reddit and that was that.
- zo7 10y agoI was going to say something similar but this is a really good analogy. One thing I might say differently however is that most people on Reddit don't come to the mall to go to their favorite shops, they come to the mall to come to the mall -- the fact that their favorite shops are there comes secondary. You can try to have a lot of specialized communities with high-quality content and thoughtful discussion, but to a lot of users these places are just sideshows in a site that they go to primarily for entertainment.