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Reddit is unfortunately a major thing in my life. There's an eternal battle between left and right politics in my small European country's relevant subreddits.

by lysace 2y ago

Reddit is unfortunately a major thing in my life. There's an eternal battle between left and right politics in my small European country's relevant subreddits. Not very healthy - it's like a never ending feed of "someone is wrong on the Internet". For the record: "right" here is roughly equivalent with the political position of the US Democratic party. Unfortunately these subreddits are not very balanced, so when I do take a break, I see that the other side "wins" to a noticeably larger degree. Again, small country.

ncr100 2y ago
It's fascinating, and being "The Subject" of the fascination and never truly "Objective" is a particular conundrum! Good luck with the "unfortunately" aspect -- totally possible to stop. (sexual humor warning: https://imgur.com/dont-touch-girls-m0Qk8 https://imgur.com/dont-touch-girls-m0Qk8) I think it's part of being human. I invite a brain specialist to step in here and comment which regions of the brain compelled us to agree with those whom we also feel we "need". EDIT: .. cut to ncr100 proceeding to open youtube.com ...
stego-tech 2y ago
What finally helped me break out of those bad habits was reframing who I was trying to convince of an argument. Let's face it, it's highly unlikely you're going to ever convince someone you're directly arguing with online just by the simple fact you're arguing, which often suggests some sort of impasse. Instead, argue as if you're trying to convince the bored reader who has climbed down through the comments (for some reason), who has found value in this discourse and is trying to get more or better perspectives. That is someone you can convince of your position. It's been a lot easier to engage in text discourse ever since I had that epiphany, because instead of taking every bait and trying to correct every wrong, I'm only engaging with folks arguing with data, with perspective, with good faith more often than not. That leads to better outcomes, I believe, instead of just contributing to so much noise.
- thuanao 2y ago
  Huh that’s a perspective I hadn’t thought about before. Thanks for sharing.
- richie_adler 2y ago
  Very positive attitude. Beware the sealions, but keep up!
- heavensteeth 2y ago
  I try to keep a few things in mind whenever I'm arguing with somebody that I think are helpful (hopefully): 1. Most arguments come down to defining words, even if you may not realise it. 2. Don't follow rabbitholes. Don't deviate from arguing your core premise. 3. You're not trying to prove the other person wrong, you're trying to find the truth. On #1 for example; I watched a video of a conservative arguing liberals (or something) about a few premises, including "gay marriage does not exist". It was immediately clear to me, but apparently not to the people in the video, that this guy has a different definition of "marriage" to me. That's the breadth of the disagreement. That's all people should've argued with him about. But not one person did. Even when he described his definition of marriage, and how his premise comes about from that definition, everybody immediately became sidetracked. There's just no chance of finding common ground behaving like that.
  - lysace 2y ago
    In the case of Reddit: 4. It's not that unlikely that you are arguing with an actual child who has picked up enough terminology to be dangerous but completely lacks any deeper understanding.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
crims0n 2y ago
There is a book for this, aptly titled “You Should Quit Reddit”. It got me to quit, highly recommend it.
- lysace 2y ago
  CliffsNotes (ish): https://www.reddit.com/r/nosurf/comments/1693ky4/you_should_quit_reddit_book_keynotes_part_1/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nosurf/comments/1693ky4/you_should_...
- ddq 2y ago
  I would love to completely cut reddit out of my life but would enjoy a smaller, more positive alternative that aims to provide the benefits of reddit when it was at its best but without the inherent flaws of the system's design and the dark patterns it is now known to encourage. I'm a bit put off by lemmy from my initial, cursory glance for a variety of reasons, but maybe I'm just using it wrong. Would love to hear suggestions that people have used for an extended time and would personally vouch for.
  - nozzlegear 2y ago
    I've quit Reddit off and on over the years, and one of my fears the first time was missing out on news or helpful tips from small professional/hobby subreddits. I ended up building a tool that would email me the top 3 posts from a list of subreddits every day, and that was all I needed to quit without feeling like I was missing out. My tool eventually broke after Reddit's api change, but now I use one called redditletter¹ which does the same thing. ¹ https://redditletter.com https://redditletter.com
    - ffiirree 2y ago
      Nice! May try this
    - johnwarne 2y ago
      This was exactly the same kind of motivation that prompted me to create a RSS project to allow me to interact with platforms like Reddit/HN/Lemmy in a more low-volume and healthy way, subscribing to just the top posts in my RSS reader with rich custom feeds. https://www.upvote-rss.com https://www.upvote-rss.com
fph 2y ago
Browse individual subreddits, in this way you avoid most of 'the algorithm'.

by lysace 2y ago

ncr100 2y ago

It's fascinating, and being "The Subject" of the fascination and never truly "Objective" is a particular conundrum! Good luck with the "unfortunately" aspect -- totally possible to stop. (sexual humor warning: https://imgur.com/dont-touch-girls-m0Qk8 https://imgur.com/dont-touch-girls-m0Qk8) I think it's part of being human. I invite a brain specialist to step in here and comment which regions of the brain compelled us to agree with those whom we also feel we "need". EDIT: .. cut to ncr100 proceeding to open youtube.com ...

stego-tech 2y ago

What finally helped me break out of those bad habits was reframing who I was trying to convince of an argument. Let's face it, it's highly unlikely you're going to ever convince someone you're directly arguing with online just by the simple fact you're arguing, which often suggests some sort of impasse. Instead, argue as if you're trying to convince the bored reader who has climbed down through the comments (for some reason), who has found value in this discourse and is trying to get more or better perspectives. That is someone you can convince of your position. It's been a lot easier to engage in text discourse ever since I had that epiphany, because instead of taking every bait and trying to correct every wrong, I'm only engaging with folks arguing with data, with perspective, with good faith more often than not. That leads to better outcomes, I believe, instead of just contributing to so much noise.

thuanao 2y ago
Huh that’s a perspective I hadn’t thought about before. Thanks for sharing.
richie_adler 2y ago
Very positive attitude. Beware the sealions, but keep up!
heavensteeth 2y ago
I try to keep a few things in mind whenever I'm arguing with somebody that I think are helpful (hopefully): 1. Most arguments come down to defining words, even if you may not realise it. 2. Don't follow rabbitholes. Don't deviate from arguing your core premise. 3. You're not trying to prove the other person wrong, you're trying to find the truth. On #1 for example; I watched a video of a conservative arguing liberals (or something) about a few premises, including "gay marriage does not exist". It was immediately clear to me, but apparently not to the people in the video, that this guy has a different definition of "marriage" to me. That's the breadth of the disagreement. That's all people should've argued with him about. But not one person did. Even when he described his definition of marriage, and how his premise comes about from that definition, everybody immediately became sidetracked. There's just no chance of finding common ground behaving like that.
- lysace 2y ago
  In the case of Reddit: 4. It's not that unlikely that you are arguing with an actual child who has picked up enough terminology to be dangerous but completely lacks any deeper understanding.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

crims0n 2y ago

There is a book for this, aptly titled “You Should Quit Reddit”. It got me to quit, highly recommend it.

lysace 2y ago
CliffsNotes (ish): https://www.reddit.com/r/nosurf/comments/1693ky4/you_should_quit_reddit_book_keynotes_part_1/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nosurf/comments/1693ky4/you_should_...
ddq 2y ago
I would love to completely cut reddit out of my life but would enjoy a smaller, more positive alternative that aims to provide the benefits of reddit when it was at its best but without the inherent flaws of the system's design and the dark patterns it is now known to encourage. I'm a bit put off by lemmy from my initial, cursory glance for a variety of reasons, but maybe I'm just using it wrong. Would love to hear suggestions that people have used for an extended time and would personally vouch for.
- nozzlegear 2y ago
  I've quit Reddit off and on over the years, and one of my fears the first time was missing out on news or helpful tips from small professional/hobby subreddits. I ended up building a tool that would email me the top 3 posts from a list of subreddits every day, and that was all I needed to quit without feeling like I was missing out. My tool eventually broke after Reddit's api change, but now I use one called redditletter¹ which does the same thing. ¹ https://redditletter.com https://redditletter.com
  - ffiirree 2y ago
    Nice! May try this
  - johnwarne 2y ago
    This was exactly the same kind of motivation that prompted me to create a RSS project to allow me to interact with platforms like Reddit/HN/Lemmy in a more low-volume and healthy way, subscribing to just the top posts in my RSS reader with rich custom feeds. https://www.upvote-rss.com https://www.upvote-rss.com

fph 2y ago

Browse individual subreddits, in this way you avoid most of 'the algorithm'.