3 ms·
I have found that this only works if you take recommendations with the understanding that you're almost always getting "the reddit answer". Every sub has theirs
by jimmygrapes 5y ago
I have found that this only works if you take recommendations with the understanding that you're almost always getting "the reddit answer". Every sub has theirs, and their reasoning might be because they agree with some entirely unrelated thing, and have bonded over that to the point that other recommendations between each other are heavily weighted and rapidly creates a "go to" response.
Example: check r/sandiego for [insert type of taco] suggestions. There should be thousands of options if you're actually from San Diego but you'll get 5 or 6 at most that stand out a lot, and 1 or 2 that get the most up votes or responses.
Now that may in fact be the "best" (depending on your and their definition) but you might also find that it's just the restaurant that has the most interesting social media presence, or the one you go to in order to signal that you're "one of us". Maybe that's exactly what you want, maybe it's what you want to avoid, but either way it's important to know the mood and trends of the subreddit as well as general reddit culture (and don't tell me it doesn't exist).
- Nition 5y agoI think this is a really good observation, and "bonded over" is a good term. At the extremes, people will even recommend the thing and disparage other options when they haven't tried either one themselves. They're just trying to be part of the group. Edit: A couple more real examples off the top of my head: - In some circles, everyone recommends getting a Shure SM7B + a Cloudlifter for recording voice. It's not a terrible option but not really better than many other mics (many of which are higher gain, removing the need for the separate preamp), and even if selecting an SM7B, depending on your audio interface you may not need the Cloudlifter. It's just a preamp, not magic. - On Reddit's /r/NewZealand, everyone loves Whittaker's chocolate and hates Cadbury. Whittaker's is locally owned and honestly is better than Cadbury, but from reading the discourse you'd think Cadbury was completely disgusting. Any sort of moderate opinion (e.g. liking both) is not allowed.
- TheHegemon 5y agoEveryone knows it's Tacos El Gordo obviously /s
- ninth_ant 5y agoSo your observation is spot-on, that a subreddit community will produce unbalanced opinions due to groupthink. Likely true of any active community forum that would give recommendations such as this. However, if I was looking for recommendations about a good taco place when visiting San Diego, I would bet that the groupthink recommendations of an active San Diego subreddit would be vastly superior to what you'd get on Google. Unfortunately, this points to gamification of reddit recommendations as being a major target for the same folks wrecking web search results with their SEO blogspam garbage.
- evandale 5y ago>... "the reddit answer". Every sub has theirs, and their reasoning might be because they agree with some entirely unrelated thing One way to stop this is sort by controversial. It allows you to see what the hivemind votes down at the top. I also find city subreddits can be much more polarizing and needing controversial sort vs interest subreddits. The only common thing city subreddits share is geography so you get wildly different opinions which controversial sort helps with. The subreddits dedicated to an interest are much more susceptible to the reddit answer. The other option is search for an /r/askvegas or similar -- if a city subreddit has a dedicated subreddit for questions you can usually get better answers on the asking subreddit, but they are closer to the reddit answer than a general city subreddit will give you.