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Going outside is a really good one. Honestly, I was late to the Reddit train, didn't join until 2015 or 2016 or so. I noticed a marked decline in my overall me

by pc86 3y ago

Going outside is a really good one. Honestly, I was late to the Reddit train, didn't join until 2015 or 2016 or so. I noticed a marked decline in my overall mental well-being but I really did feel addicted to it. For several reasons I stopped using it a few years ago and I can't think of a single thing that's worse off than before. Unless you're running ads and using traffic from Reddit to fuel your business, you're not getting any value out of it. I'd see something on HN and it would be weeks at best before it would pop up on any of the technical/programming subs, and the conversation was always 1/10 the quality of here.

mr_00ff00 3y ago
Can suggest this enough. Getting outside of the internet has been great. Try replacing Reddit with the outdoors. Lock your phone so you don’t open it as often and your brain will find things outside of your phone to fill your time with.
2023throwawayy 3y ago
> you're not getting any value out of it Speak for yourself. There are many great niche communities from which I have derived pretty tremendous value. The front page is generally worthless and toxic, yes, but that doesn't condemn the entire site.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- kaiken1987 3y ago
  Yeah I think that's something a lot of people miss because they never create accounts or only sub to the defaults. If you are in the subs with a million people then yeah they are typically pretty bad. But when you get into small niche hobby subreddits they are usually pretty great, with people who are there because they love the hobby and want others to enjoy it. As well with good advice for beginners. And what a lot of the alternatives are missing is those people. It's what makes it thrive or wither on the vine.
_oce_ 3y ago
Disagree, while it's obviously bad to spend all of your free time on a screen, there are some good middle sized subreddits that provided me value for my job or my hobbies.
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  I agree. r/ML had decent conversation at times, so did r/controltheory and r/RL and esp r/experienceddevs Without apollo I … feel cured of my reddit addiction tbh.
Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
You have a high bar. Compared to where most people hang out online (Instagram, TikTok, etc.); many subreddits feel like debating in the agora with Pericles. I agree HN is better for the kind of subjects HN covers, but for others I tend to go to Reddit.
last_responder 3y ago
>Unless you're running ads and using traffic from Reddit to fuel your business, you're not getting any value out of it. Yea that's really subjective and blanket statements are silly.
Niksko 3y ago
This is not a good take for the things that Reddit really excelled at: niche hobbies. Mechanical keyboards, mushroom cultivation, home brewing, just to name a few of my interests. None of that gets much traction on HN, nor outside unless your friends happen to have the same interests. Discord has a bit of that content, but I find Discord harder to engage with because it feels a bit more synchronous and time sensitive.
- fisherjeff 3y ago
  I can only comment on homebrewing but in my experience, local homebrewing clubs exist and are usually way more fun than Reddit
- comechao 3y ago
  Yeah, Discord is probably the "real-time" alternative to Reddit. Unfortunately, it's not searchable. The real problem is not software but, as many pointed out before, building a community of communities that size is hard.
  - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
    > The real problem is not software but, as many pointed out before, building a community of communities that size is hard. Personally, I believe the solution is aggregation rather than forming a “community”. Outside of maybe subreddit networks, there wasn’t a whole lot of connection between various redditors. You really can’t consider the entirety of Reddit one large “community” housing other communities. Instead, it was more akin to a fancy RSS feed, aggregating posts from various communities together under a standardized API with some unnecessary algorithms mixed in. So, my solution would be to promote individuality in communities, with having separate websites, but to offer an open source website that houses links to various communities alongside their RSS feeds.
- tourmalinetaco 3y ago
  Reddit was only “good” at those topics in that it was easy to find niches. Not that there was any measurable quality in the discussions. I cannot think of a single interest of mine where Reddit trumped dedicated forums. From Dakkadakka to geekhack to BladeForums, it really wasn’t overly beneficial. Easier to keep track of topics, maybe, but any subreddit of decent size was mostly advertising/memes anyway, not true discussion. The only aspect I can truly say Reddit was good for me was the basics of archiving, personal finances, cooking, and frugality. And I’m sure there’s even better forums dedicated to those topics.
unpopularopp 3y ago
Says the account with 21k karma which puts them in the 0.1% on HN. lmao
- pc86 3y ago
  This account is well over a decade old, I think that's something like 5 or 6 points a day? Literally one or two meaningful comments a week will do that over a decade. The above comment has over 40 points, I guess I'm good for a few months now! And am I the only one that finds this kind of response creepy? It says to me that you didn't like my comment for $REASONS, so you went to my profile to try to find something you could bring up. If it wasn't the karma it would have been the age of the account or some poorly aged comment from years ago.
xboxnolifes 3y ago
I feel like we use reddit in entirely different ways. I don't use the front page. I'm not subscribed to any main subreddit. I use subreddits to find information about my interests: Individual game subreddits, Financial information, Product reviews. Does everyone who has strong dislike of reddit stay subscribed to /r/news and /r/worldnews (and others)? I know those subs ruin my feeds and my mood. Otherwise, I don't see how reading something like /r/factorio can decline one's mental wellbeing.
- davidktr 3y ago
  Not OP but I feel like them. Been on Reddit since 2008, daily user, exclusively used niche subreddits. It was an addiction. I feel so much better since quitting it end of last year. I read books now, or the actual material reddit was talking about ("haha who reads the article amirite"), watch a ton of great stuff on youtube, read more discussions + submissions here. My life has improved considerably.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
    I suggest a more hybrid model. I’m lucky my local Reddit (the subreddit for my local geographic area) isn’t an Astro-turfed cesspit so I can get a lot of use out of checking it daily (I will know if my morning commute is going to suck). But I refuse to use it except to do things outside of the internet: go on Reddit to figure niche bike paths then go out biking. Go on reddit to find carpentry ideas then go woodworking. I don’t get in purely-online discusssions because you have no exit point.
irrational 3y ago
Were you looking at the really big subreddits, or were you looking at smaller subreddits like r/boardgames, r/cooking, r/gardening, r/woodworking, etc.? I do agree about the bigger subreddits, but not about the smaller niche subreddits.
spike021 3y ago
I've made several lifelong friends on Reddit from a small subreddit for a sports team. Sure there's a lot of bad with Reddit but there's also good in there if you try to look for it. Which you could say about nearly anything in life.

by pc86 3y ago

mr_00ff00 3y ago

Can suggest this enough. Getting outside of the internet has been great. Try replacing Reddit with the outdoors. Lock your phone so you don’t open it as often and your brain will find things outside of your phone to fill your time with.

2023throwawayy 3y ago

> you're not getting any value out of it Speak for yourself. There are many great niche communities from which I have derived pretty tremendous value. The front page is generally worthless and toxic, yes, but that doesn't condemn the entire site.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kaiken1987 3y ago
Yeah I think that's something a lot of people miss because they never create accounts or only sub to the defaults. If you are in the subs with a million people then yeah they are typically pretty bad. But when you get into small niche hobby subreddits they are usually pretty great, with people who are there because they love the hobby and want others to enjoy it. As well with good advice for beginners. And what a lot of the alternatives are missing is those people. It's what makes it thrive or wither on the vine.

_oce_ 3y ago

Disagree, while it's obviously bad to spend all of your free time on a screen, there are some good middle sized subreddits that provided me value for my job or my hobbies.

PartiallyTyped 3y ago
I agree. r/ML had decent conversation at times, so did r/controltheory and r/RL and esp r/experienceddevs Without apollo I … feel cured of my reddit addiction tbh.

Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago

You have a high bar. Compared to where most people hang out online (Instagram, TikTok, etc.); many subreddits feel like debating in the agora with Pericles. I agree HN is better for the kind of subjects HN covers, but for others I tend to go to Reddit.

last_responder 3y ago

>Unless you're running ads and using traffic from Reddit to fuel your business, you're not getting any value out of it. Yea that's really subjective and blanket statements are silly.

Niksko 3y ago

This is not a good take for the things that Reddit really excelled at: niche hobbies. Mechanical keyboards, mushroom cultivation, home brewing, just to name a few of my interests. None of that gets much traction on HN, nor outside unless your friends happen to have the same interests. Discord has a bit of that content, but I find Discord harder to engage with because it feels a bit more synchronous and time sensitive.

fisherjeff 3y ago
I can only comment on homebrewing but in my experience, local homebrewing clubs exist and are usually way more fun than Reddit
comechao 3y ago
Yeah, Discord is probably the "real-time" alternative to Reddit. Unfortunately, it's not searchable. The real problem is not software but, as many pointed out before, building a community of communities that size is hard.
- tourmalinetaco 3y ago
  > The real problem is not software but, as many pointed out before, building a community of communities that size is hard. Personally, I believe the solution is aggregation rather than forming a “community”. Outside of maybe subreddit networks, there wasn’t a whole lot of connection between various redditors. You really can’t consider the entirety of Reddit one large “community” housing other communities. Instead, it was more akin to a fancy RSS feed, aggregating posts from various communities together under a standardized API with some unnecessary algorithms mixed in. So, my solution would be to promote individuality in communities, with having separate websites, but to offer an open source website that houses links to various communities alongside their RSS feeds.
tourmalinetaco 3y ago
Reddit was only “good” at those topics in that it was easy to find niches. Not that there was any measurable quality in the discussions. I cannot think of a single interest of mine where Reddit trumped dedicated forums. From Dakkadakka to geekhack to BladeForums, it really wasn’t overly beneficial. Easier to keep track of topics, maybe, but any subreddit of decent size was mostly advertising/memes anyway, not true discussion. The only aspect I can truly say Reddit was good for me was the basics of archiving, personal finances, cooking, and frugality. And I’m sure there’s even better forums dedicated to those topics.

unpopularopp 3y ago

Says the account with 21k karma which puts them in the 0.1% on HN. lmao

pc86 3y ago
This account is well over a decade old, I think that's something like 5 or 6 points a day? Literally one or two meaningful comments a week will do that over a decade. The above comment has over 40 points, I guess I'm good for a few months now! And am I the only one that finds this kind of response creepy? It says to me that you didn't like my comment for $REASONS, so you went to my profile to try to find something you could bring up. If it wasn't the karma it would have been the age of the account or some poorly aged comment from years ago.

xboxnolifes 3y ago

I feel like we use reddit in entirely different ways. I don't use the front page. I'm not subscribed to any main subreddit. I use subreddits to find information about my interests: Individual game subreddits, Financial information, Product reviews. Does everyone who has strong dislike of reddit stay subscribed to /r/news and /r/worldnews (and others)? I know those subs ruin my feeds and my mood. Otherwise, I don't see how reading something like /r/factorio can decline one's mental wellbeing.

davidktr 3y ago
Not OP but I feel like them. Been on Reddit since 2008, daily user, exclusively used niche subreddits. It was an addiction. I feel so much better since quitting it end of last year. I read books now, or the actual material reddit was talking about ("haha who reads the article amirite"), watch a ton of great stuff on youtube, read more discussions + submissions here. My life has improved considerably.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
  I suggest a more hybrid model. I’m lucky my local Reddit (the subreddit for my local geographic area) isn’t an Astro-turfed cesspit so I can get a lot of use out of checking it daily (I will know if my morning commute is going to suck). But I refuse to use it except to do things outside of the internet: go on Reddit to figure niche bike paths then go out biking. Go on reddit to find carpentry ideas then go woodworking. I don’t get in purely-online discusssions because you have no exit point.

irrational 3y ago

Were you looking at the really big subreddits, or were you looking at smaller subreddits like r/boardgames, r/cooking, r/gardening, r/woodworking, etc.? I do agree about the bigger subreddits, but not about the smaller niche subreddits.

spike021 3y ago

I've made several lifelong friends on Reddit from a small subreddit for a sports team. Sure there's a lot of bad with Reddit but there's also good in there if you try to look for it. Which you could say about nearly anything in life.