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I know I'm not saying anything new here, but I'm always shocked by just how vicious the Reddit community is, especially from a group who considers themselves hi

I know I'm not saying anything new here, but I'm always shocked by just how vicious the Reddit community is, especially from a group who considers themselves highly intelligent (compared to those "other" people). Videos like you describe are there every time I visit, along with fight videos and comments making up a back story as to what the victim did to deserve it, etc. Sometimes I wonder why things like vigilanteism and other bad behaviors were so prevalent in the past, but then you go to these communities and realize it hasn't gone away, it's just moved online. Which, I guess is progress of a sort (less violence) and a big step backwards when you think about how in the past you could have moved away from a mistake or embarrassing encounter, but not anymore if it becomes viral enough.

pixl97 3y ago
How many millions of people post on Reddit? Reddit is just made of everyone, and it turns out that everyone is a bunch of jerks.
ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
Groups which consider themselves as very intellectual can commit the worst atrocities. Just look at communists.
- j45 3y ago
  It has little to do with education or intellect. The disease of righteousness is available to all. Being able to reflect and examine one’s own thoughts and beliefs is harder than fitting in and being righteous.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    Smarter people are better at rationalizing away their bad behavior, though. You need certain cognitive capacity in order to engage in sophistry.
    - j45 3y ago
      Fair, there's plenty of extremely cognitive and smart "uneducated by higher education" people. I don't know if that makes it less worse, or worse. Enabling righteousness, where others are wrong, or missing the details, or thinking there can't be any understanding in something they don't understand or disagree with is a big problem. Lots of people whack others over the head to externally validate their beliefs. I think Evangelism might even fall under that category by some definitions, no offence.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- watwut 3y ago
  Communists were quite anti-intellectual. Literally against intelligentsia
nullindividual 3y ago
> I'm always shocked by just how vicious the Reddit community is Eventually you won't be shocked. It's anonymous and you can say (almost) anything you like. Moderation of large subs is a joke, even before the strike. Just like the reddit "Trust and Safety" team, the mods of this particular subreddit, even though the post violated a sub rule along with the site rule, stayed up, unlocked. > but not anymore if it becomes viral enough. Not everyone wants to be a celebrity. But just read _this_ thread. You have at least one individual justifying this behavior.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  Reddit has always been hostile/tribal, I would say it's slightly less so than in the past.
  - capableweb 3y ago
    Absolutely not, in the beginning it was a super welcoming community, that openly accepted all types of people with open arms, where you could have friendly debates with people you'd probably punch in the face in real life. But it quickly changed as reddit became a more mainstream 4chan alternative rather than the welcoming community it was in beginning.
    - ipaddr 3y ago
      Have you ever been to the php subreddit... toxic since day one.
mackatap 3y ago
Reddit has grown large enough to lose any identity it once had. It used to be tech literate, now it is really just the average population.
gjsman-1000 3y ago
Here's the ironic part: Where are all the actually smart people? If the person is actually smart in a field, they probably have jobs in that field. A job that is often extremely mentally or physically involved, leaving little time for revisiting that job over recreational periods (no time to hang out arguing with strangers, life's tough enough). There might also be NDAs involved, or concerns from higher-ups that the user might post anything that might embarrass the company, etc. It is also completely common for the smartest people in a field to have not an inkling on how to set up a website or join social media (because they are generally... on the older side). The result is that Reddit, and social media, are mostly people who have studied those fields and didn't get in. The results are self-evident. I like to think of the uncle from Napoleon Dynamite who is constantly bragging to everyone about how he could have been an excellent NFL player. Edit: It is also for this reason that I suspect that StackOverflow and Reddit moderators do it for what some have called “productivity porn.” “Look at me - I’m such a great person in this field that I even get to moderate the forums!” Even though they often probably couldn’t hold a midlevel job.
- darepublic 3y ago
  Intelligence is not a spectrum you can place people along and then point to a dot and say "this is where stupid comments stop"
imiric 3y ago
It shouldn't surprise you that online communities are a reflection of human nature. The behaviors we see are the effects of groupthink taken to its extreme. Even in "civilized" forums such as this one, you'll notice people conforming with the group mentality, and deleting their posts if they get downvoted. When there is little to no moderation, and viciousness is acceptable within the group, this behavior will spiral out of control, as individuals try to one-up each other, leading to vigilantism, manufactured outrage, cancel culture, racism, and all sort of abhorrent behavior an individual wouldn't do in isolation. We all seek validation in our ideas, after all. All of this still exists offline, BTW. This is how riots happen. What the internet does is make it more possible by connecting more people than we traditionally could communicate with, and providing a safe space for any kind of discussion to happen. It's a tool our tribal monkey brains aren't ready for.
- dustincoates 3y ago
  I think you're largely right, but IMO the difference between what happens online and what happens offline is that you have to look people in the eye offline and you may encounter them randomly in person. There's a moderating function that generally (not always) keeps the heat down. Same for pile-ons. I'm not so naive to think that they never happen offline, but there's a higher cost to doing them than there is when all you have to do is write 140 characters to dunk on someone you won't even remember in two weeks.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    People that write on the internet are probably just on the average less sane. There are prevalent types on the interwebs that I just never meet outside.
    - chmod600 3y ago
      Are they a different set of people online and off, or a just a different set of behaviors for the same people?
- rightbyte 3y ago
renewiltord 3y ago
The backstory ones are amazing. It's like an LLM were set free. "He probably stalked her from the age of 12 and waited till she was 19 before he bought her an ice cream of the flavour her mum liked before she died. All so that she'd invite him to this party where he could fight this other guy. Imagine you think this guy is a friend and he only became your friend because he hated someone else. As someone with trauma because of my parents dying when I was young, finding out that the one guy who was your friend is not would be devastating."
- b112 3y ago
  It actually reads like modern TV. Soaps, and teen drama. Part of the problem is, we tend to ignore age. That sort of post could have been made by a 9 year old.
fakedang 3y ago
[flagged]
- brookst 3y ago
  Really depends on the sub. r/conservative bans everyone who questions the right, even conservatives. They’ll ban you for being opposed to banning books, fer chrissake. Reddit just lends itself to tribal behaviors.
isaacremuant 3y ago
Your first paragraph is true but also, what do you expect when politics is exactly the same. You're given and us Vs them narrative and if you fall on the wrong classification by whoever decides they want to apply a label, any harm you can come to is delightful and cherished. Violence is justified too. "Words are violence" so violence can be used to "defend" against it. I think it goes well beyond Reddit and has all to do with creating a context of righteousness and dehumanization to be able to justify mob behaviour and, ultimately, violence. Power, in one word.
mvncleaninst 3y ago
I kind of wish that some billionaire would just get mad, buy reddit, and run it into the ground. The world would be a much better place Or better yet, round the redditors up and send them to Siberia
- nonbirithm 3y ago
  Be careful what you wish for, this has already happened to The Social Network Formerly Known As Twitter. I wonder if anyone who wished doom upon X in the past years is finally getting the satisfaction they wanted from watching its steady demise. Personally I don't see anything stopping someone from just making Twitter: The Sequel and starting the whole cycle all over again. There's nothing that outlaws the creation of an internet cesspool.
  - brewdad 3y ago
    There was little of lasting value on Twitter. It was great for breaking news or timely discussion but I’ve rarely had the need to go back and reread old tweets. Reddit, at least in the right subs, is often a StackExchange with a much broader scope and less pedantic moderation. I probably refer to old Reddit posts multiple times a week. I don’t miss Twitter. I would absolutely miss Reddit.
rgrieselhuber 3y ago
For some reason, this reminded me of the Bansky quote: “The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. It's people who follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages.”
MaulingMonkey 3y ago
> Sometimes I wonder why things like vigilanteism and other bad behaviors were so prevalent in the past, For vigilanteism it seems simple to me: it was the original counterforce against anti-social sociopathic and predatory behavior such as murder - predating law enforcement, predating law, predating humanity. Even animals arguably engage in "vigilanteism" when retaliating against another pack's attack, or when pack leaders are overly cruel and tyranical. The deterence of "don't hurt us - or we'll hurt you". We rightfully look down on vigilanteism now as it tends to short circuit things like the due process of an assumed-to-be effective, functional, and ethical legal system... but those are some pretty big assumptions, and I have several bridges to sell you if you think they're always true, or if you think everyone agrees on which legal systems rise to that level. Vigilanteism is merely the default form of "justice" that we sometimes rise above, given the right circumstances. Circumstances which are often lacking online.

pixl97 3y ago

How many millions of people post on Reddit? Reddit is just made of everyone, and it turns out that everyone is a bunch of jerks.

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago

Groups which consider themselves as very intellectual can commit the worst atrocities. Just look at communists.

j45 3y ago
It has little to do with education or intellect. The disease of righteousness is available to all. Being able to reflect and examine one’s own thoughts and beliefs is harder than fitting in and being righteous.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  Smarter people are better at rationalizing away their bad behavior, though. You need certain cognitive capacity in order to engage in sophistry.
  - j45 3y ago
    Fair, there's plenty of extremely cognitive and smart "uneducated by higher education" people. I don't know if that makes it less worse, or worse. Enabling righteousness, where others are wrong, or missing the details, or thinking there can't be any understanding in something they don't understand or disagree with is a big problem. Lots of people whack others over the head to externally validate their beliefs. I think Evangelism might even fall under that category by some definitions, no offence.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
watwut 3y ago
Communists were quite anti-intellectual. Literally against intelligentsia

nullindividual 3y ago

> I'm always shocked by just how vicious the Reddit community is Eventually you won't be shocked. It's anonymous and you can say (almost) anything you like. Moderation of large subs is a joke, even before the strike. Just like the reddit "Trust and Safety" team, the mods of this particular subreddit, even though the post violated a sub rule along with the site rule, stayed up, unlocked. > but not anymore if it becomes viral enough. Not everyone wants to be a celebrity. But just read _this_ thread. You have at least one individual justifying this behavior.

ipaddr 3y ago
Reddit has always been hostile/tribal, I would say it's slightly less so than in the past.
- capableweb 3y ago
  Absolutely not, in the beginning it was a super welcoming community, that openly accepted all types of people with open arms, where you could have friendly debates with people you'd probably punch in the face in real life. But it quickly changed as reddit became a more mainstream 4chan alternative rather than the welcoming community it was in beginning.
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    Have you ever been to the php subreddit... toxic since day one.

mackatap 3y ago

Reddit has grown large enough to lose any identity it once had. It used to be tech literate, now it is really just the average population.

gjsman-1000 3y ago

Here's the ironic part: Where are all the actually smart people? If the person is actually smart in a field, they probably have jobs in that field. A job that is often extremely mentally or physically involved, leaving little time for revisiting that job over recreational periods (no time to hang out arguing with strangers, life's tough enough). There might also be NDAs involved, or concerns from higher-ups that the user might post anything that might embarrass the company, etc. It is also completely common for the smartest people in a field to have not an inkling on how to set up a website or join social media (because they are generally... on the older side). The result is that Reddit, and social media, are mostly people who have studied those fields and didn't get in. The results are self-evident. I like to think of the uncle from Napoleon Dynamite who is constantly bragging to everyone about how he could have been an excellent NFL player. Edit: It is also for this reason that I suspect that StackOverflow and Reddit moderators do it for what some have called “productivity porn.” “Look at me - I’m such a great person in this field that I even get to moderate the forums!” Even though they often probably couldn’t hold a midlevel job.

darepublic 3y ago
Intelligence is not a spectrum you can place people along and then point to a dot and say "this is where stupid comments stop"

imiric 3y ago

It shouldn't surprise you that online communities are a reflection of human nature. The behaviors we see are the effects of groupthink taken to its extreme. Even in "civilized" forums such as this one, you'll notice people conforming with the group mentality, and deleting their posts if they get downvoted. When there is little to no moderation, and viciousness is acceptable within the group, this behavior will spiral out of control, as individuals try to one-up each other, leading to vigilantism, manufactured outrage, cancel culture, racism, and all sort of abhorrent behavior an individual wouldn't do in isolation. We all seek validation in our ideas, after all. All of this still exists offline, BTW. This is how riots happen. What the internet does is make it more possible by connecting more people than we traditionally could communicate with, and providing a safe space for any kind of discussion to happen. It's a tool our tribal monkey brains aren't ready for.

dustincoates 3y ago
I think you're largely right, but IMO the difference between what happens online and what happens offline is that you have to look people in the eye offline and you may encounter them randomly in person. There's a moderating function that generally (not always) keeps the heat down. Same for pile-ons. I'm not so naive to think that they never happen offline, but there's a higher cost to doing them than there is when all you have to do is write 140 characters to dunk on someone you won't even remember in two weeks.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  People that write on the internet are probably just on the average less sane. There are prevalent types on the interwebs that I just never meet outside.
  - chmod600 3y ago
    Are they a different set of people online and off, or a just a different set of behaviors for the same people?
rightbyte 3y ago

renewiltord 3y ago

The backstory ones are amazing. It's like an LLM were set free. "He probably stalked her from the age of 12 and waited till she was 19 before he bought her an ice cream of the flavour her mum liked before she died. All so that she'd invite him to this party where he could fight this other guy. Imagine you think this guy is a friend and he only became your friend because he hated someone else. As someone with trauma because of my parents dying when I was young, finding out that the one guy who was your friend is not would be devastating."

b112 3y ago
It actually reads like modern TV. Soaps, and teen drama. Part of the problem is, we tend to ignore age. That sort of post could have been made by a 9 year old.

fakedang 3y ago

[flagged]

brookst 3y ago
Really depends on the sub. r/conservative bans everyone who questions the right, even conservatives. They’ll ban you for being opposed to banning books, fer chrissake. Reddit just lends itself to tribal behaviors.

isaacremuant 3y ago

Your first paragraph is true but also, what do you expect when politics is exactly the same. You're given and us Vs them narrative and if you fall on the wrong classification by whoever decides they want to apply a label, any harm you can come to is delightful and cherished. Violence is justified too. "Words are violence" so violence can be used to "defend" against it. I think it goes well beyond Reddit and has all to do with creating a context of righteousness and dehumanization to be able to justify mob behaviour and, ultimately, violence. Power, in one word.

mvncleaninst 3y ago

I kind of wish that some billionaire would just get mad, buy reddit, and run it into the ground. The world would be a much better place Or better yet, round the redditors up and send them to Siberia

nonbirithm 3y ago
Be careful what you wish for, this has already happened to The Social Network Formerly Known As Twitter. I wonder if anyone who wished doom upon X in the past years is finally getting the satisfaction they wanted from watching its steady demise. Personally I don't see anything stopping someone from just making Twitter: The Sequel and starting the whole cycle all over again. There's nothing that outlaws the creation of an internet cesspool.
- brewdad 3y ago
  There was little of lasting value on Twitter. It was great for breaking news or timely discussion but I’ve rarely had the need to go back and reread old tweets. Reddit, at least in the right subs, is often a StackExchange with a much broader scope and less pedantic moderation. I probably refer to old Reddit posts multiple times a week. I don’t miss Twitter. I would absolutely miss Reddit.

rgrieselhuber 3y ago

For some reason, this reminded me of the Bansky quote: “The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. It's people who follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages.”

MaulingMonkey 3y ago

> Sometimes I wonder why things like vigilanteism and other bad behaviors were so prevalent in the past, For vigilanteism it seems simple to me: it was the original counterforce against anti-social sociopathic and predatory behavior such as murder - predating law enforcement, predating law, predating humanity. Even animals arguably engage in "vigilanteism" when retaliating against another pack's attack, or when pack leaders are overly cruel and tyranical. The deterence of "don't hurt us - or we'll hurt you". We rightfully look down on vigilanteism now as it tends to short circuit things like the due process of an assumed-to-be effective, functional, and ethical legal system... but those are some pretty big assumptions, and I have several bridges to sell you if you think they're always true, or if you think everyone agrees on which legal systems rise to that level. Vigilanteism is merely the default form of "justice" that we sometimes rise above, given the right circumstances. Circumstances which are often lacking online.