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Reddit used to be like Hacker News, but as it became popular the memes started rolling in, and effectively lowered the IQ quotient and technology bias of the ho

Reddit used to be like Hacker News, but as it became popular the memes started rolling in, and effectively lowered the IQ quotient and technology bias of the home page content and diluted the sub reddits. I looked back through archive.org a few years ago to anecdotally prove this theory to myself and yes, on the front page the factual content (in my personal opinion) as opposed to meme content seems to drop between 20-40% compared to more recently. The same seemed to happened to digg.com which made people move to reddit (remember that before it killed its user base?). I really hope this never happens to Hacker News...

dijit 4y ago
This comment reeks of exceptionalism and “iamverysmart”. I hope you dont take strong offence to that because I am not saying you think this way, only that what you wrote sounds that way. That said: Mass appeal always lowers the quality of discourse, due (in part) to there being more of a bias towards being first (the first comment to make a certain type of joke will be rewarded most) and also due to the fact that people tend to aggregate around things that are fun, not necessarily correct. btw: IQ is a measure of pattern matching and is used in children to determine mental development relative to their biological age, it shouldn’t have any affect on internet discourse.
- SillyUsername 4y ago
  This was not my intention or what I hoped to convey. I don't hold a bias (I couldn't if I wanted to - I have a son with Down Syndrome) I just wanted to point out a reason for the change - which you more eloquently wrote - since I miss the more technical discourse.
scarface74 4y ago
Reddit is just like Facebook. If you are seeing low quality content, it’s mostly the fault of self selection. On Reddit, the serious subreddits don’t have a lot of memes and many prevent them. On Facebook if your feed is full of toxicity and politics, it’s because your friends are FB warriors and toxic.
USA-RedDragon 4y ago
> effectively lowered the IQ quotient Yeah, you really demonstrate how it's lowered. Intelligence quotient quotient
- SillyUsername 4y ago
  I'm not going to do you a personalised study. Why don't you check it for yourself instead of down voting, or perhaps actually prove me wrong - my comments clearly stated this is anecdotal and "effectively"? If you take a small pool individuals who discuss technical topics, and dilute it with more people it will trend down owing to the population IQ approaching the average of ~100. Technical articles will also be less prevalent owing to the relative greater number of non technical topics and less interest in those that are. It's not that technical people don't enjoy memes, it's that the wider populous won't enjoy esoteric technical or scientific articles.
  - USA-RedDragon 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - dang 4y ago
      We've banned this account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: I changed my mind and unbanned you because https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29870459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29870459 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34047843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34047843 were really good HN comments. Please post like that, and not like the parent, in the future!

dijit 4y ago

This comment reeks of exceptionalism and “iamverysmart”. I hope you dont take strong offence to that because I am not saying you think this way, only that what you wrote sounds that way. That said: Mass appeal always lowers the quality of discourse, due (in part) to there being more of a bias towards being first (the first comment to make a certain type of joke will be rewarded most) and also due to the fact that people tend to aggregate around things that are fun, not necessarily correct. btw: IQ is a measure of pattern matching and is used in children to determine mental development relative to their biological age, it shouldn’t have any affect on internet discourse.

SillyUsername 4y ago
This was not my intention or what I hoped to convey. I don't hold a bias (I couldn't if I wanted to - I have a son with Down Syndrome) I just wanted to point out a reason for the change - which you more eloquently wrote - since I miss the more technical discourse.

scarface74 4y ago

Reddit is just like Facebook. If you are seeing low quality content, it’s mostly the fault of self selection. On Reddit, the serious subreddits don’t have a lot of memes and many prevent them. On Facebook if your feed is full of toxicity and politics, it’s because your friends are FB warriors and toxic.

USA-RedDragon 4y ago

> effectively lowered the IQ quotient Yeah, you really demonstrate how it's lowered. Intelligence quotient quotient

SillyUsername 4y ago
I'm not going to do you a personalised study. Why don't you check it for yourself instead of down voting, or perhaps actually prove me wrong - my comments clearly stated this is anecdotal and "effectively"? If you take a small pool individuals who discuss technical topics, and dilute it with more people it will trend down owing to the population IQ approaching the average of ~100. Technical articles will also be less prevalent owing to the relative greater number of non technical topics and less interest in those that are. It's not that technical people don't enjoy memes, it's that the wider populous won't enjoy esoteric technical or scientific articles.
- USA-RedDragon 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 4y ago
    We've banned this account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: I changed my mind and unbanned you because https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29870459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29870459 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34047843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34047843 were really good HN comments. Please post like that, and not like the parent, in the future!