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The cynical doomerism of reddit is like an infectious disease that ensnares you in their pit of misery with it's initial blast of catharsis. People whose lives

The cynical doomerism of reddit is like an infectious disease that ensnares you in their pit of misery with it's initial blast of catharsis. People whose lives bring them out of that swamp leave reddit and stop contributing, so it's mainly populated with miserable cynical doomers all jerking each other off about how screwed they are. Most of them are teenage/college kids working bottom rung jobs/entry level work/unemployed, with all the naivete that comes with it. Stay away from it.

mstipetic 9mo ago
As someone who’s on Reddit a lot, I completely agree
- Workaccount2 9mo ago
  I was chronically on reddit daily from when Digg collapsed until they pulled the API. I was long overdue to leave by that point anyway. Now in the last couple years, both my sisters have discovered reddit, and hanging out with them is like the god damn /r/all comments sections all over again. So insidious.
  - scottyah 9mo ago
    I am very much in the same boat. I still browse every now and then, and now it feels like I can spot a redditor from two opinions/values in a conversation. It's definitely turned more mainstream and more indoctrinating. If Fox News turned our parents political, reddit is doing it to our generation.
    - mstipetic 9mo ago
      I think often times they’re not wrong but then again what do I do with this constant barrage of cynicism, can’t change much anyway
yodsanklai 9mo ago
Cynical doomerism isn't limited to low pay jobs. Another super negative place is Team blind, where a lot of contributors are extremely well-paid.
- hn_go_brrrrr 9mo ago
  I don't use Blind often, but whenever I do I always feel better about my job afterwards. Yeah, there are definitely parts about my job that suck, but at least it's not that bad.
andersonpico 9mo ago
their cynicism is perfectly understandable once you correctly identified the demographics (which you did), so I'm not sure why you're holding pessimism against poor people with a bleak future; like it or not that's far more anchored in reality than anything around these parts, as there are far more people with "bottom rung jobs" than software developers and VC investors in the bay area.
- tjwebbnorfolk 9mo ago
  Most people in the US begin life poor, and most of them are not poor forever. I wouldn't call this a "bleak future". I was definitely poor when I was 18, but I wasn't pessimistic. Pessimism at such a young age is almost always a mistake.
  - lukan 9mo ago
    "Pessimism at such a young age is almost always a mistake." Is pessimism a consciouss choice?
    - hn_go_brrrrr 9mo ago
      You can develop pessimism without a conscious choice, but once you become aware of how negative your outlook is, it's a conscious choice to not try to do better.
      - bigbadfeline 9mo ago
        Being pessimistic about pessimism is individual-damaging and socially ruinous. One can develop pessimism about pessimism without a conscious choice, but once you become aware of how negative your outlook on pessimism is, it's a conscious choice to not try to figure out the different meanings of that word and how important it is for the proper functioning of democracy. Maybe read Orwell for a glimpse of mandatory optimism: "The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one... Winston turned round abruptly. He had set his features into the expression of quiet optimism which it was advisable to wear when facing the telescreen.
metanonsense 9mo ago
In my experience, this depends a lot on the subreddits you are subscribed to. Even in that set, the general mood sometimes changes significantly over time, e.g. because moderators change, a flood of new people is coming in because of some trends (AI), or some reddit meta events (eg a post being bestoffed). Generally speaking, a few vocal asshles can spoil your subreddit and drag the overall sentiment down.
- Workaccount2 9mo ago
  The assholes on reddit aren't the problem, often they are the people who are closest to breaking free from the swamp (yes, some are just assholes). The problem reddit has is the celebration of it's doomerism, even in the small hobby subs the vibe is still present. The highest upvoted comments are so nauseatingly repetitive and formulaic, ridden with whatever the contemporary dogma of reddit is, substantiated by snowballs of echo-chamber fallacy with pebbles of truth in the middle.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 9mo ago
    Consider /r/BuyItForLife ... nothing close to what you're describing. If you want a different experience, you need to be more selective.
sdenton4 9mo ago
My original home on the internet is metafilter, where I've been a member since 2001. For an extremely long time, it was the internet's best kept community, imo. Unfortunately, it also seems to be falling into pure doomerism, especially as the user base has declined over the last few years. The overall population is definitely on the older side at this: I was one of the younger users 25 years ago, and probably still am. Which is to say, the feelings of doom are quite widespread. There's a good argument to be made that it underlies the rise of trumpism: people in the sticks feeling abandonment, resentment, and doom, and expressing it at the ballot box.
- layer8 9mo ago
  There were a lot more reasons for a positive outlook for the world 25 years ago. It significantly predates Trumpism. Some people see 9/11 as the turning point.
andrepd 9mo ago
Why would young people with dismal economic perspectives and a poisoned political system possibly be miserable? That doesn't take too much to understand.
- ggrantrowberry 9mo ago
  They’re miserable because they think this way. They think this way because they spend time with others spreading cynicism. Dismal economic perspectives and a poisoned political system is a point of view and a talking point and in reality not true for most people. If you know even a little bit about history you likely won’t have this perspective. Get off social media and look around at real life and you’ll see all sorts of great things!
  - pepperball 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - ggrantrowberry 9mo ago
      [flagged]
  - andrepd 9mo ago
    I don't use algorithmic social media and I'm looking at dozens of history books in my shelf as I type this. I can do without the patronising tone, thanks very much.
    - kjkjadksj 9mo ago
      Then you’d at least be aware of the standard of living even the poorest among us enjoy compared to someone in say manchuria or eastern europe in 1941. The irony of the grandchildren and great grand children of actual holocaust survivors claiming the world today is simply too screwed up to bring kids into is astounding.
      - 9mo ago
idontwantthis 9mo ago
The worst is going on any city's subreddit. You will think it is a terrible place with the worst drivers, crime, terrible schools, no jobs, and loneliness. And if you try to contradict that with some positivity you will get attacked.
- snowram 9mo ago
  Country specific subs aren't better either. They slowly changed from comfy places to talk about laid back topics to a full on brigaded cesspool where only the most polarizing opinion thrive.
Psillisp 9mo ago
Reddit literally is what you make of it. Unlike HN.
- brightball 9mo ago
  Only if you create an account and start subscribing. If you just visit and browse you end up at all/popular which, when I still visited it was very predictable content any given day.
  - 4k93n2 9mo ago
    you can hide a fair bit with ublock origin, if you dont mind using old.reddit old.reddit.com##div[data-subreddit="politics"] old.reddit.com##.linkflairlabel[title="Politics"]:upward(.link) old.reddit.com##.link:has-text(/Trump|MAGA/i) old.reddit.com##.link:has(a[href*="foxnews.com"]) although i have hundreds of these filters and its still not great, but its better than nothing
andoando 9mo ago
Its not the doomerism that bothers me. Its the hivemind mentality and brain dead comments and zero critical thinking, and the absurd negativity and judgment of everyone and everything, and the politicalization of all the main subs (top post on pics is pretty much guranteed to be something Trump) Even as someone thats far left I cant stand Reddits mentality. 15 years ago there were nice discussions happening on reddit, now all the comments are one liner stupid jokes from people who never even bothered to read the article and people calling you a bootlicker if you don't agree with every nonsense against Trump/Musk/some billionaire.
- SoftTalker 9mo ago
  Yeah you can pretty easily spot the chronically addicted redditor by their copy/paste standard rejoinders, memes, and cliches. Also, more and more of them are bots which are trained to regurgitate themes that get a lot of engagement.
PaulDavisThe1st 9mo ago
Just pick your subreddits more carefully, and your experience of reddit will be extremely different. Mine bears absolutely no resemblance to what you describe, likely because I never go near the "top level" reddits, and stay only with the subreddits that matter to me.
seizethecheese 9mo ago
This is currently the top reply to the top comment. It’s classified at 89% negative by this model: https://huggingface.co/distilbert/distilbert-base-uncased-finetuned-sst-2-english https://huggingface.co/distilbert/distilbert-base-uncased-fi... Ironically, the above comment scored 99.9% negativity.

mstipetic 9mo ago

As someone who’s on Reddit a lot, I completely agree

Workaccount2 9mo ago
I was chronically on reddit daily from when Digg collapsed until they pulled the API. I was long overdue to leave by that point anyway. Now in the last couple years, both my sisters have discovered reddit, and hanging out with them is like the god damn /r/all comments sections all over again. So insidious.
- scottyah 9mo ago
  I am very much in the same boat. I still browse every now and then, and now it feels like I can spot a redditor from two opinions/values in a conversation. It's definitely turned more mainstream and more indoctrinating. If Fox News turned our parents political, reddit is doing it to our generation.
  - mstipetic 9mo ago
    I think often times they’re not wrong but then again what do I do with this constant barrage of cynicism, can’t change much anyway

yodsanklai 9mo ago

Cynical doomerism isn't limited to low pay jobs. Another super negative place is Team blind, where a lot of contributors are extremely well-paid.

hn_go_brrrrr 9mo ago
I don't use Blind often, but whenever I do I always feel better about my job afterwards. Yeah, there are definitely parts about my job that suck, but at least it's not that bad.

andersonpico 9mo ago

their cynicism is perfectly understandable once you correctly identified the demographics (which you did), so I'm not sure why you're holding pessimism against poor people with a bleak future; like it or not that's far more anchored in reality than anything around these parts, as there are far more people with "bottom rung jobs" than software developers and VC investors in the bay area.

tjwebbnorfolk 9mo ago
Most people in the US begin life poor, and most of them are not poor forever. I wouldn't call this a "bleak future". I was definitely poor when I was 18, but I wasn't pessimistic. Pessimism at such a young age is almost always a mistake.
- lukan 9mo ago
  "Pessimism at such a young age is almost always a mistake." Is pessimism a consciouss choice?
  - hn_go_brrrrr 9mo ago
    You can develop pessimism without a conscious choice, but once you become aware of how negative your outlook is, it's a conscious choice to not try to do better.
    - bigbadfeline 9mo ago
      Being pessimistic about pessimism is individual-damaging and socially ruinous. One can develop pessimism about pessimism without a conscious choice, but once you become aware of how negative your outlook on pessimism is, it's a conscious choice to not try to figure out the different meanings of that word and how important it is for the proper functioning of democracy. Maybe read Orwell for a glimpse of mandatory optimism: "The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one... Winston turned round abruptly. He had set his features into the expression of quiet optimism which it was advisable to wear when facing the telescreen.

metanonsense 9mo ago

In my experience, this depends a lot on the subreddits you are subscribed to. Even in that set, the general mood sometimes changes significantly over time, e.g. because moderators change, a flood of new people is coming in because of some trends (AI), or some reddit meta events (eg a post being bestoffed). Generally speaking, a few vocal asshles can spoil your subreddit and drag the overall sentiment down.

Workaccount2 9mo ago
The assholes on reddit aren't the problem, often they are the people who are closest to breaking free from the swamp (yes, some are just assholes). The problem reddit has is the celebration of it's doomerism, even in the small hobby subs the vibe is still present. The highest upvoted comments are so nauseatingly repetitive and formulaic, ridden with whatever the contemporary dogma of reddit is, substantiated by snowballs of echo-chamber fallacy with pebbles of truth in the middle.
- PaulDavisThe1st 9mo ago
  Consider /r/BuyItForLife ... nothing close to what you're describing. If you want a different experience, you need to be more selective.

sdenton4 9mo ago

My original home on the internet is metafilter, where I've been a member since 2001. For an extremely long time, it was the internet's best kept community, imo. Unfortunately, it also seems to be falling into pure doomerism, especially as the user base has declined over the last few years. The overall population is definitely on the older side at this: I was one of the younger users 25 years ago, and probably still am. Which is to say, the feelings of doom are quite widespread. There's a good argument to be made that it underlies the rise of trumpism: people in the sticks feeling abandonment, resentment, and doom, and expressing it at the ballot box.

layer8 9mo ago
There were a lot more reasons for a positive outlook for the world 25 years ago. It significantly predates Trumpism. Some people see 9/11 as the turning point.

andrepd 9mo ago

Why would young people with dismal economic perspectives and a poisoned political system possibly be miserable? That doesn't take too much to understand.

ggrantrowberry 9mo ago
They’re miserable because they think this way. They think this way because they spend time with others spreading cynicism. Dismal economic perspectives and a poisoned political system is a point of view and a talking point and in reality not true for most people. If you know even a little bit about history you likely won’t have this perspective. Get off social media and look around at real life and you’ll see all sorts of great things!
- pepperball 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ggrantrowberry 9mo ago
    [flagged]
- andrepd 9mo ago
  I don't use algorithmic social media and I'm looking at dozens of history books in my shelf as I type this. I can do without the patronising tone, thanks very much.
  - kjkjadksj 9mo ago
    Then you’d at least be aware of the standard of living even the poorest among us enjoy compared to someone in say manchuria or eastern europe in 1941. The irony of the grandchildren and great grand children of actual holocaust survivors claiming the world today is simply too screwed up to bring kids into is astounding.
    - 9mo ago

idontwantthis 9mo ago

The worst is going on any city's subreddit. You will think it is a terrible place with the worst drivers, crime, terrible schools, no jobs, and loneliness. And if you try to contradict that with some positivity you will get attacked.

snowram 9mo ago
Country specific subs aren't better either. They slowly changed from comfy places to talk about laid back topics to a full on brigaded cesspool where only the most polarizing opinion thrive.

Psillisp 9mo ago

Reddit literally is what you make of it. Unlike HN.

brightball 9mo ago
Only if you create an account and start subscribing. If you just visit and browse you end up at all/popular which, when I still visited it was very predictable content any given day.
- 4k93n2 9mo ago
  you can hide a fair bit with ublock origin, if you dont mind using old.reddit old.reddit.com##div[data-subreddit="politics"] old.reddit.com##.linkflairlabel[title="Politics"]:upward(.link) old.reddit.com##.link:has-text(/Trump|MAGA/i) old.reddit.com##.link:has(a[href*="foxnews.com"]) although i have hundreds of these filters and its still not great, but its better than nothing

andoando 9mo ago

Its not the doomerism that bothers me. Its the hivemind mentality and brain dead comments and zero critical thinking, and the absurd negativity and judgment of everyone and everything, and the politicalization of all the main subs (top post on pics is pretty much guranteed to be something Trump) Even as someone thats far left I cant stand Reddits mentality. 15 years ago there were nice discussions happening on reddit, now all the comments are one liner stupid jokes from people who never even bothered to read the article and people calling you a bootlicker if you don't agree with every nonsense against Trump/Musk/some billionaire.

SoftTalker 9mo ago
Yeah you can pretty easily spot the chronically addicted redditor by their copy/paste standard rejoinders, memes, and cliches. Also, more and more of them are bots which are trained to regurgitate themes that get a lot of engagement.

PaulDavisThe1st 9mo ago

Just pick your subreddits more carefully, and your experience of reddit will be extremely different. Mine bears absolutely no resemblance to what you describe, likely because I never go near the "top level" reddits, and stay only with the subreddits that matter to me.

seizethecheese 9mo ago

This is currently the top reply to the top comment. It’s classified at 89% negative by this model: https://huggingface.co/distilbert/distilbert-base-uncased-finetuned-sst-2-english https://huggingface.co/distilbert/distilbert-base-uncased-fi... Ironically, the above comment scored 99.9% negativity.