12 ms·
This is great I was in the middle of a pretty nasty argument and now it'll just stop
by rcpt 4y ago
This is great I was in the middle of a pretty nasty argument and now it'll just stop
- zwieback 4y agoYou caused the shutdown!
- 01100011 4y agoIDK what it is about reddit that makes it easy to get sucked into an argument. When I'm twitter, I just speak my mind. If you don't like it, fine, I feel little compulsion to engage. If things get nasty, I just mute or block. I feel like I get the same amount of benefit out of each site, but twitter delivers it w/ less stress. Maybe it's just an artifact of how, on Twitter, I generally only follow 'experts' and interact w/ their followers vs the sorts of folks who camp on Reddit waiting to start arguments.
- rockostrich 4y ago> If you don't like it, fine, I feel little compulsion to engage. If things get nasty, I just mute or block. I do this on Reddit. If there's a back and forth and I feel like the person replying is not commenting in good faith then I'll just block them.
- millzlane 4y agoI just say "oh okay".
- TheCleric 4y agooh okay
- Consultant32452 4y agoMy favorite trope on Reddit is when you explain something clearly and people respond that you haven't given an example or explained or whatever. It's not that you haven't explained, they just don't accept your explanation and demand more. I've taken to increasingly absurd responses to this trope. I often explain with perverse metaphors involving their mothers. Highly recommend finding your own flavor of fun responses to this ludicrous bad faith response.
- wlesieutre 4y agoAnd an obsession with sources. Which makes sense sometimes, but you can tell someone your favorite color is orange and they're not happy unless there's a Reuters article about what color you like.
- mcronce 4y agoWrite a Medium article about your color preferences and link it. You might even make a few cents!
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoReddit has a massive hard-on for external authority in any conceivable context so it shouldn't be surprising that they want a citation if you say the sky is blue.
- freeflight 4y agoI see nothing wrong with an "obsession" with sources. The www was very much built on sharing http links as a form of citation, no reason not to make use of such an fundamental and established function. Imho the opposite has become a much worse issue; People casually claiming the most extraordinary things, far outside the realm of opinions, with not even an attempt to source it.
- johnnyanmac 4y agoIt makes sense on Wikipedia. But meanwhile, Reddit seems powered by anecdotes but will ask for a source when you bring opposition. Motte and Bailey.
- bee_rider 4y agoA bad-faith request for a source is just an attempt to waste the other person’s time. If a source is requested, it should be obvious or explained where the source fits into the over-arching argument, it might require just as much work on the asker’s side, to establish why it is necessary. There’s also the risk that the request for a source just devolves into an argument about the quality of the source, which basically torpedos the discussion.
- Philip-J-Fry 4y agoDon't block, it's so cheap and is equally in bad faith. It means they can't see your comments, it means they can't reply to people who reply to your comments, it's the worst mechanism Reddit has ever implemented. Mute for sure, but blocking is just petty.
- johnnyanmac 4y agoBlock used to be a mute. You "block someone" you no longer see them nor get pinged by them. But they can still reply to you and I believe you can still respond to them if you go out of your way to find the comment. This was how it was until ~2 years ago. Then it turned into some intermediate step where you opted out of interacting with them at all but you can still see the comment chain by default. The blocked user was simply collapsed, but you can expand it and see everything. i.e. it ruined the point of a "mute". Then almost a year ago it became what you describe. You still see collapsed blocked users, and you still can't respond, but the user can no longer respond to you nor any child in your chain. I hate it and simply want a "mute". I don't care if someone wants to yell at a wall. The announcement seemed poorly revceived by comments, but they still kept it around to this day.
- the_af 4y ago> If there's a back and forth and I feel like the person replying is not commenting in good faith then I'll just block them. I do this regularly on Reddit, it's the only way to stay sane. But get this: I had one person get so enraged they logged in with a second account just to reply to me saying I was dumb for blocking them, then they blocked me! I guess some people really need the last word.
- mlinsey 4y agoI think it's downvoting. It's one thing to see (what you think is) a really bad reply to you get some likes, it's another to see a negative number next to your comment, I feel much more compulsion to defend myself for the latter.
- none_to_remain 4y agoJudge your Reddit comments by the sum of the absolute value of votes, not the sum of the value of votes.
- Firmwarrior 4y agoRedditors' opinions are almost completely worthless measures of comment quality.. if you want a huge karma score, you can just repost the top stuff from a couple of years ago into popular subs and repost popular comments from months/years earlier on posts that pick up traction in /r/rising Some niche subs never downvote people, and some downvote almost everything I think your best bet is to ignore karma altogether on that site
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoYou can get a "high score" in any community that keeps score by repeating its tropes and doing stuff to signal you're part of the in-group. Beyond a certain size all communities harbor this behavior.
- Firmwarrior 4y agoyeah.. my solution is to use old.reddit, and click "disable inbox replies" on everything I say Then when I'm REALLY bored I'll go click my own history and see what the peanut gallery thought of my various comments. I get a lot of mega-downvotes for really innocuous stuff for no apparent reason, along with the occasional angry response, so it's best to keep my stress levels down by keeping that stuff isolated. I'd be a nervous wreck if my phone/watch were buzzing at me every time some dickhead online decides to rip into me. I don't know how people can stand it.
- 4y ago
- andrewmutz 4y agoDo you post under your real identity on twitter? And pseudonymoulsy on reddit?
- 01100011 4y agoNope. Pseudo on both. I do feel like I have more of a persona on Twitter though, with some high profile accounts following me back and such. I regularly burn my reddit accounts every year and start fresh. It's not like the karma is good for anything. In general though, I feel like... 25% of my reddit comments get replies from folks with questionable reasoning skills and entrenched positions vs maybe 5% on Twitter where it's more conversational and exploratory.
- scoofy 4y agoTwitter is a megaphone at best, and a series of bumper stickers at worst. Reddit is a cocktail party. If you want to say your piece, and can’t handle criticism, Twitter is the place. If you care about context and nuance, Reddit is much better. The problem with Reddit is the same problem with cocktail parties — you really need to read the room before spouting of something that will be unpopular.
- asimilator 4y agoContext and nuance? On Reddit? Usually I think it lacks both.
- freeflight 4y agoIf Twitter is the frame of reference being used, then Reddit wins out by virtue of layout and content allowances. Trying to cram context and nuance, about topics that can be very big and complicated, into 280 character text bites is not the easiest task. While the character limit for a Reddit comment is 10k.
- deely3 4y agoI think its wrong to speak about Reddit as a whole. There a lot of small moderated communities where you can discuss anything without "noise". Just ignore most popular sabs. Yay, someone downvoted me just like on a reddit!
- red-iron-pine 4y agoIs it a front-page sub? or a niche / specialized / hobby sub? Lowest common denominator means front page or highly trafficked subs will be terrible. But find a smaller community and it's generally better.
- corbulo 4y agoReddit is a negative image of context and nuance. That site repels anyone who knows anything about anything.
- 4y ago
- jonny_eh 4y agoArguments feel more public, like people are watching. Similar to forum threads in the past. When people are watching, I feel the need to defend myself (or "The Truth" as I see it).
- quitit 4y agoReddit has the petty bonus of people going down your comment chain and downvoting it. The site would benefit from listing who upvotes and downvotes each post/comment. That would sort out a lot of the abuse issues long before other ideas such as real identities.
- monksy 4y agoYou are not able to go through a persons profile and downvote on people's posts. It looks like it from the UI, however it doesn't persist those votes. It may be capturing your attempt though. To do that you have to visit each and every post and downvote it.
- plorkyeran 4y agoAnd even if you click through to the actual posts, there's a fairly low limit on the number of times you can downvote a specific person per day before it stops counting.
- nebula8804 4y agoI would love to read through a source code leak. I have wasted so much of my 20s on that god forsaken site. Now im in my mid 30s and occasionally reminiscence about how innocent I thought it was back in 2010. It is garbage now and it was garbage back than, we just didn't know. In my mind, I actually hold Digg in higher regard just because they never made it to the point where it became a net negative on the world. You know what they say: you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain or something like that.
- jck 4y agoReddit used to be open source: https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit
- nebula8804 4y ago
- nolok 4y agoIt's in part the upvote / downvote, an horrible gamification of online discourse triggering your need to win the "spectators", even if you end up not having any vote at all because no one cares. Personally, I miss the old slashdot system. It was far from perfect, but it was still much better I think.
- Scarblac 4y ago(+5, Flamebait)
- red-iron-pine 4y ago(+3, Funny)
- Consultant32452 4y agoThis reminded me of a time I got into an argument on Reddit. Someone eventually chimed in that I was probably right, that my logic was sound, but "look at all the downvotes you are getting". Even as they typed it out, it never occurred to them that there could be something more important than the internet points. I explained if you never get downvoted to oblivion, you're probably not saying anything interesting.
- wing-_-nuts 4y agoThe thing I hate most about reddit are all the little bubbles that are created by bad moderation. Sometimes, this is even automated. You can only post on certain threads if you have the right skin color (r/BlackPeopleTwitter), or ideological disposition (r/conservative) or net worth (r/fatFire). The absolute worst are when some mod shadow bans you (all posts / comments are silently removed), and refuses to tell you why. I had that happen on my city subreddit, I guess because I said we needed a larger police presence to get property crime under control. That was the only remotely controversial thing I've ever said there.
- jasonladuke0311 4y ago
- Philip-J-Fry 4y agoIt's the upvote/downvote mechanism. If you know you're right but you've been downvoted, you tend to try and redeem the argument. But because of herd mentality you'll never win. The worst new tactic I've seen people use is replying to you and then blocking you so you can't see or reply to their comment, or any direct children of that comment. It's sooo petty and annoying, but Reddit has decided that's how blocking works. Which is ridiculous.
- DANmode 4y ago> IDK what it is about reddit that makes it easy to get sucked into an argument. Culture, partially due to mod slots being used for parallel construction of advertising and PR cleanup more than stimulating actual discussion. Credit to DanG for keeping this place whole so long.
- the_af 4y ago> IDK what it is about reddit that makes it easy to get sucked into an argument Agreed that Reddit is particularly bad, but some of the worst flamebait arguments I've had were here on HN. One person insisted on having the last word, here on HN, no matter what. At the end he (I don't know why I think it was a "he") was simply mirroring back what I just said, which is more or less the way I argued with my brother when I was 10.
- cainxinth 4y agoI always do a quick scan of a user’s history before responding to someone I think might be debating in bad faith. More often than not, I’ll see they aren’t the kind of person it’s worth tangling with. Never wrestle a pig…
- johnnyanmac 4y agoIn my experience: Twitter is a flood. At some point you just disengage because there's so many responses coming in and you can't answer them all. So you answer none. Unless you get in early on a reddit thread that explodes, you will generally only get 2-3 replies per comment at most. Usually none, sometimes 1. And that's how you get into arguments.
- mock-possum 4y agosome sort of thing about the community I guess. I feel the same way, I'll catch myself trying to argue with people here occasionally, then be like, wait, this isn't reddit, nevermind. I think maybe it's not just about writing content directly in response to someone else, but writing response that I think will be useful to the community who stumbles across and reads it? Not that I'm always perfect about that. Either that, or HN strips emojis. Might be that.
- lost_tourist 4y agoFor me, I think it's because most of the trolls aren't just like "no you!" they'll write a wall of text full of half lies that you feel like you should at least repudiate for future redditors to know that you're right, and the troll is wrong.
- anonymouslambda 4y agoOne of the best life hacks is never get the last word in on Reddit.
- dmonitor 4y agothe second best life hack is to block the person your arguing with so that they can’t respond and you guarantee getting the last word
- silisili 4y agoOr reply with a short slam dunk, then delete the comment. They'll see the notification and be able to read it, but can't reply.
- hotpotamus 4y agoI would think any seasoned Reddit argumentarian would have an alt or two they could reply to you with.
- johnnyanmac 4y agoI beleive it and have seen it. But it's never happened to me in my ~8-9 years on the site. I guess I lucked out.
- wzy 4y ago
- agumonkey 4y agoTurns out most of the web problem have a simple fix, unplug it.
- moffkalast 4y agoThe admins must've seen what you were doing and decided to just pull the plug to put you out of your misery.
- adrianmonk 4y agoMy life improved when I learned to detect these situations and walk away. A good sign that I need to is if I am upset and a particular comment keeps popping back into my mind. The best way I've found to walk away is delete all my comments and close all the tabs. If the thread is gone, I can't respond to it. If the tabs are gone, I won't have any reminders that the discussion existed. Possibly I'll be perceived as losing the argument, but my pride is not more important than my mental well-being.
- AdamJacobMuller 4y ago> delete all my comments The thing which I've found helps me with this is to just delete my account. Besides some subreddit-specific accounts, I generally delete my one main account and start a new one every few months, usually after some nasty interaction with someone on reddit, especially when people start to follow me around. I've had multiple occasions where people start commenting about a disagreement on an unrelated thread/comment I make, even in a completely unrelated subreddit sometimes! It's such a weird place, if it wasn't for some niche subs I enjoy participating in which I don't think have any parallels elsewhere, I would really prefer to just stop using it entirely.
- nebula8804 4y agoMan you must be so good and interesting enough that you live rent free in peoples head. I can only dream of being that important to someone's life stranger or otherwise. As it stands, the best I could muster up is people tend to block me over time(I can't prove it but I can see patterns in reduced responses & upvote/downvote counts). Both on Reddit and in real life.
- AdamJacobMuller 4y agoI really don't know why and I don't really appreciate the attention to be honest. The most recent one was some comments about The Last of Us TV show.
- 4y ago
- iancmceachern 4y agoI'll argue with you if you want. What are we arguing about and what is my stance on the issue? /s
- jokoon 4y agowhat were you arguing about?
- steve_adams_86 4y agoPeople are so argumentative on Reddit, I don't find it's worth commenting most of the time. Same with Twitter. I like to engage on HN, but the rest of the internet I've mostly decided to only browse. Even then, I've seriously reduced how much I allow myself to do that. The further I withdraw myself from it all, the stranger it looks when I return to it. I never regret not participating in these places.
- tomrod 4y agoI follow the three deep rule. If I haven't made my point clear enough within three comments, then I'm probably not capable of finishing the job.