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Just COMPLETELY ignore it. I truly believe after spending so much time on Reddit I became a worse person by being exposed to the same regurgitated/top voted op

by rfnslyr 13y ago

Just COMPLETELY ignore it. I truly believe after spending so much time on Reddit I became a worse person by being exposed to the same regurgitated/top voted opinions on things nobody should be talking about unless qualified (which you can't verify). I realized after a few years after taking an objective look at my life how much I had changed. If you dwell in a medium, you tend to absorb it, and that's the only medium I dwelled in. It's taken me quite awhile to get back to being a normal, nice, human being, sometimes I still slip up in real life. Every topic I've been exposed to ad nauseam on Reddit that I experience in real life, I have to consciously drop all my preconceptions on the topic that I developed online and look at it with a fresh mind, it's slowly helping. It's a podium for anyone who has an unqualified opinion to suddenly voice it for no real reason. That, combined with the broken upvote system promoting terrible content is a recipe for disaster. "Reddit: the front page of an on going Dunning-Kruger effect study". You don't stand to gain anything from Reddit. The comments are largely terrible unless you visit very niche subreddits that are moderated and/or have verified users. You can argue that some smaller subreddits have really good content, but do they REALLY? Maybe you'll find a few cool links, some good comments, and an odd article or two. The reality is, nobody who has a credible opinion on something is going to bother wasting time having in depth conversations on an anonymous message board, so how good can the content quality possibly get? I realized how bad Reddit was when I started following comment threads and analysis on other websites on he same articles as Reddit. What was upvoted as total truth (top comment) on certain articles was just scraping the bottom of the barrel. It's basically: hunt for topic -> scrape some shit off the internet (be it wikipedia or whatever site) -> loosely compose it into some shit essay everyone will upvote with a strong ideal behind it -> top comment. This goes for every Reddit thread. I'm mad and disappointed in myself for wasting so many years on it. It's a shit flinging contest determined by fake points called "karma" that people, for some odd reason, REALLY REALLY care about, mitigating any hope for a quality discussion. Great response OP. edit: toned down the vulgarity of the original post edit2: My comment is towards the default subreddits, not small niche subreddits that you have to hunt for yourself to find.

tlrobinson 13y ago
The trick with Reddit is to ignore all of the default frontpage subreddits and find the niche ones that interest you. There are some great communities buried under the crap.
consultutah 13y ago
what's reddit? ;)
nabla9 13y ago
You are using reddit wrong. You don't have to use Reddit in default setting. Unsubscribe from everything and then select those subreddits that are nice. You don't have to look at comments if you don't like their contents. There are several nice and tightly moderated reddits that are great. For example /r/askhistorians and /r/askscience and several others.
- glogla 13y ago
  Not to mention, some of the arguments can be made about HN without changing a word. Reddit is different because people tend to chose subreddits that they care about, so the discussions are generally more positive. For example, there are small subreddits about FirefoxOS or Jolla, that contain discussions about both topics, and are quite enthusiastic. On the other hand, any HN discussion about those topics is full of people who are doing nothing but complaining, putting (the thing) down and nay-saying.
  - psbp 13y ago
    I was waiting for the conclusion "just like HN", but I guess they carry the same delusions about HN not being a trite hivemind that they once did for reddit.
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  But that's the thing. There is no actual real reason to go on Reddit. If I want to read something about the French Revolution, I'm going to pick up a book about it by a qualified author that I'll research before hand. By simple virtue of being on Reddit, regardless of subreddit, you are wasting your own time. It doesn't matter HOW good the top comment is, ultimately it's a gamble. How do you know if what you're reading is real? Trust, I've been on the site for like 7 years now and I've been to nearly every sub deemed "worthy". Almost in every situation, I'd prefer an entirely new forum specifically dedicated to that topic. By design, it's just a comment system without any features really, and that design promotes a certain behaviour, which plagues the intention of the poster in the first place, because it's not longer about sharing information, it's about sharing information in the context of it earning more upvotes, so the content becomes corrupt.
smtddr 13y ago
>> I hate Reddit so much, it's such an absolute shit hole. Pretend like it doesn't even exist, because it shouldn't. I truly believe after spending so much time on Reddit I became a worse person. I realized after a few years after taking an objective look at my life how much I had changed. If you dwell in a medium, you tend to absorb it, and that's the only medium I dwelled in. I very strongly agree with this. When Digg did that "update-of-doom", I ended up on Reddit but I couldn't stay for longer than a year. There is way too much hate[1] on that site. And for those who say "Well, just stick with a subreddit you like" that doesn't work. Because of bitcoin, for the first time in like 3 years I went to /r/bitcoin & /r/litecoin. Didn't take me 10 minutes to run into a racist comment. For all the good deeds that happen on Reddit, I still consider it a negative net-value. 1. http://pando.com/2013/02/10/william-shatner-calls-out-reddit-for-racism-and-hate-mongering/ http://pando.com/2013/02/10/william-shatner-calls-out-reddit...
- tlrobinson 13y ago
  /r/bitcoin has gone to shit. Try /r/bitcoinserious
  - rfnslyr 13y ago
    And then it's going to be /r/truebitcoinserious, then /r/seriouslyguysthisistherealbitcoinsubreddit, then /r/thefinalbitcoinsubredditsolution and so on and so on. It doesn't change anything. It just fragments an already shit community into a smaller shit community.
    - yk 13y ago
      Sadly this is the way of online forums. You always need to run from the trolls.
  - skeletonjelly 13y ago
    or /r/buttcoin
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  It's actually hilarious reading some of the top posts in r/bitcoin. 18 year old basement arm chair analysts giving their fantastic insight into the future of bitcoin based on: reading a few articles, reading bitcoins whitepaper, and reading other similarly misinformed comments.
bkoa 13y ago
Honestly I think reddit has made me a slightly better person. But only because it serves as an aggregation of awful people who I strive to be as dissimilar to as possible.
devindotcom 13y ago
What do you want reddit for? Intelligent discourse, or links to entertaining content? I never went to it looking for the former, and I'm sure you'll agree it is consistently successful in the latter. The reddit population is a subset of the world, with an emphasis on pseudonymity and ignorance, much like almost any other public forum on the net. It's one fo the biggest communities, so it attracts the most assholes. They can't make you read, and they can't make you care, but apparently you have volunteered to do both!
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  Not going to lie I thought Reddit was the coolest and best site ever once I discovered it. Only after years of using it 24/7 have I realized how garbage it really is.
dmunoz 13y ago
> Pretend like it doesn't even exist, because it shouldn't. Why not? I get a ton of useful content from reddit, and find that the discussions in the comments are often enlightening. The biggest problem with reddit is that you have to spend some time up front customizing your subreddit subscriptions. Once you've done that, the (custom) front page still has issues, and there is still bad discussion in the comments, but I can bail out of those easily by collapsing them out of view and moving on the the next comment. Lots of people seem to want to state "I don't use reddit" lately like there is really nothing of value there. However, quite often in the comments section there are experts on the topic that provide some additional information that you likely wouldn't get by reading the same information elsewhere. Edit: Many others have commented as I was typing this, and some responses seem to indicate that even staying in so-called quality subreddits isn't enough. I would just like to point out that in certain circles, people feel the exact same way about HN, and we're all here anyway. I can't be the only one who just ignores others opinions about places and takes the good where I can get it.
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  That's not the point. > Why not? I get a ton of useful content from reddit, and find that the discussions in the comments are often enlightening. How are you going to determine whether a comment is bullshit or not, especially on something super niche like some very specific question in r/Askhistorians? You can't for the most part. I do agree you can find good content, but by design Reddit is flawed. The upvote system combined with anonymity is enough reason to be skeptical about everything you read. How could I possibly be in a position to judge the truth of a post on a topic that I know nothing about? That's the problem.
  - Kluny 13y ago
    > How are you going to determine whether a comment is bullshit or not, especially on something super niche like some very specific question in r/Askhistorians? Boy, that sounds awfully familiar... like a very recent Bestof comment, originally posted in AskHistorians, about why reddit comments aren't useful sources for anything. Sounds like you're still reading the comments, despite your low opinion.
antidaily 13y ago
rebuttal: http://www.reddit.com/r/TheStopGirl http://www.reddit.com/r/TheStopGirl
corresation 13y ago
"The comments are always terrible. You can argue that some smaller subreddits have really good content, but do they really?" Yes, they really do. And no, the comments aren't always terrible. You can't simply make absurdly absolute statements and contrived caricatures and expect them to fly. You seem to have a deep emotional investment in Reddit, as if you put unrealistic expectations in it and now you strike out like a bitter ex-lover (alternately that you go karma bombed, turning you into a one-man anti-Reddit squad). Reddit is a large site with a lot of diverse people. Many subs are not my cup of tea (/r/wtf is the domain of teenagers), but many others make for an entertaining and often information diversion. I enjoy it. So do a lot of other people.
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  My post was a bit emotional yeah, just wasted way too much time on it and it shaped me in a bad way. There are some great posts/comments in very niche subreddits, but when you compare that to the entirety of the website, it's a very very small outlier. Read my comment as if you are only subbed to the defaults, since that's where OP's picture was posted, that's what I'm arguing. The existence of a few rare good comments doesn't negate all the shit that Reddit generates.
  - wtvanhest 13y ago
    Each subreddit has a unique culture. Your comment just doesn't make sensw
  - jmduke 13y ago
    To add to your point, I literally never go to "www.reddit.com" at this point (for reasons you outlined), but there's a lot of niche subreddits that I love on Reddit itself (/r/hiphopheads, /r/nba, /r/nfl, /r/mfa). The key seems to be heavy moderation and relatively small community size.
    - rfnslyr 13y ago
      The key seems to be heavy moderation and relatively small community size. I wish there was a site like Reddit/HN but on an invite/application basis only to consistently provide good content.
sergiotapia 13y ago
LOL - what the hell man. I've used Reddit for about 7 years now, and I've never felt what you're describing. Reddit is a glorified RSS feed with turing complete ranking system :P Why did you let yourself be so affected by something so measly? Is it the racism, sexism, [insert-ism] that gets to you?
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  When I was young and I found this site, I thought it was the best thing in the world. In my head, I could throw out every other site because all the links are here first! Then I saw the comments, and it's very easy to feel like you're being informed on a topic when you see it has X upvotes (if it's this upvoted, it MUST be true!) when in reality, you have no position to judge the quality of a post because you don't know enough about the topic in the first place. Now picture that, and then picture 1000 other people just like that upvoting a post, and the cycle repeats itself with every link on and on and on and on.
  - sergiotapia 13y ago
    So the problem you have with Reddit is that the barrier of entry is too low? Join subreddits like /r/sciece or /r/askscience for hardcore 'truths' - they ban memes, etc. Again, it seems like you just went out of your way searching for things to hate.
    - ceol 13y ago
      The fact you claim /r/science is for "hardcore 'truths'" kind of proves you aren't in a position to talk about this. :(
WizzleKake 13y ago
reddit used to be great, but the level of discourse plummeted when it became popular. I read slashdot mostly for the comments, but I generally stay out of the comments on reddit unless I'm looking for an explanation of something that was posted. Even then, I often have to scroll through pages of idiocy and in-jokes before I find the information I'm seeking.
- sergiotapia 13y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September ;)
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  It used to be indeed. Wish they made it invite only.
  - supergauntlet 13y ago
    Small private subs still are good. They're honestly the only ones that are, because a ban there actually means something.
meritt 13y ago
I'd advise staying away from any sort of psuedo-anonymous discussion platform without moderation because they always end up the same. Slashdot. Digg. YouTube. Online gaming. Xbox Live. Hacker News. Your vitriol against just Reddit is a bit over the top. All of your complaints apply here too. Food for thought.
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  They do apply to HN, but HN is still very small compared to Reddit, and it's just one page dedicated to one (albeit) broad topic. The difference between Reddit and HN is HN has a reputation amongst a certain culture, so users fight to maintain their own reputation on here. How many times have I seen CEO's and founders of multi million dollar companies freely offer their insight on here? That's valuable, and for the most part, it's verifiable, and that matters to me, so I stick around here. It's much easier to fling shit about a photo than it is about a very specific/complex product or technology. I can't exactly bullshit my way to top comment about something I don't know anything about on HN. A lot of the users here, if you click their profile, you can find their startups, places of work, code they wrote, their blog, etc. On Reddit it's a straight up free for all.
  - JabavuAdams 13y ago
    HN is what reddit was like 8 years ago.
skinnycow 13y ago
>You don't stand to gain anything from Reddit ever. The comments are always terrible. You can argue that some smaller subreddits have really good content, but do they really? Maybe you'll find a few cool links and an odd article or two. Your exaggerations and self aggrandizing is stupid and just makes you look ignorant. If fact, coming here and storming off about it the way you are says more about YOUR personality type than it does about reddit. I love how all of this is your own personal shit that you get to offload on reddit. Pathetic. Pathetic.
mandlar 13y ago
It really depends on what you subscribe to. I subscribe to things to help improve me. Things like /r/personalfinance, /r/financialindependence, /r/frugal. But most of the default reddits, yeah, they can be complete trash and a waste of your time. Unsubscribe from default reddits and pick the ones that really matter to you.
bendmorris 13y ago
>You don't stand to gain anything from Reddit ever. Oh come on, really? I'm a hobbyist game developer. I frequent a few subreddits including /r/gamedev. It's a fantastic community and I've learned a lot there, and I've been able to use it for free promotion. It's been very valuable to me and I've enjoyed using it. If your statement was "you don't stand to gain anything from /r/funny ever" I might agree with you, but this is just too broad a brush to paint hundreds or thousands of individual communities with.
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  You're better off going to a website entirely dedicated for that topic than sub section of a link aggregator. Why not just frequent http://www.gamedev.net/page/index.html http://www.gamedev.net/page/index.html or conceptart.org or something?
  - lostlogin 13y ago
    But isn't HN just an aggregator too? Just lacking the subsections? When you get down to it, how much specialization do you want? Surely a dedicated objective C site would suit me better, or a dedicated Python site. This generalized site called HN is no good at all. I find, unsurprisingly, that reddit isn't something that is any one thing. There is some good, some bad (well, lots) and some excellent stuff (not enough though). For the record, HN provides lots of what I want, and heaps of what I don't, but with a signal to noise magnitudes higher than reddits.
    - rfnslyr 13y ago
      The thing about HN is that you can verify a lot of users on here by going to their profile and seeing who they are (for the most part), a feature Reddit does not have. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6938377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6938377
      - bendmorris 13y ago
        On some subreddits (including gamedev) your flair can say something personally identifying about you, like your Twitter handle. It's optional, but it's optional here too.
sliverstorm 13y ago
I'm fond of my local town's sub. It doesn't get many posts, and of the posts it does get I do ignore many, but overall the SNR is plenty high and I've made some nice real-life connections there.
Kequc 13y ago
Thing about Reddit is that it is the lowest common denominator. The number of people on the internet that have an account on reddit is dizzying. There is no opinion originating in real life that doesn't make it there, so you see the same bottom feeding shit that you see all over the place. It may be heightened because real life is easier to moderate. You see people who have all the terrible opinions real people do and the same unwillingness to learn. The number of people who browse and contribute to Reddit while on the toilet I would wager is quite high, it is a toilet magazine.
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  This is a better way to word my post.
news_to_me 13y ago
This is more or less the sentiment I have of HN, too. Basically it boils down to an echo chamber; the community selects what it wants to hear, and silences other voices. Granted, HN seems to have a more pretentious selection criteria - less-mature-sounding comments are discouraged. But it seems to me that HN has much less tolerance for diversity of opinion. But I read both HN and Reddit, as well as the comments and articles in many other places, because even though I may not agree with the attitudes or opinions, they are different perspectives all the same, and I think it's a fallacy to think that some perspectives can be of lower quality than others.
droopyEyelids 13y ago
This post has such dense irony it cracked my monitor
heed 13y ago
You make it sound like it's a fault of "reddit", whoever that is, but really it's a fault of your own. That is, you (and many others) took an entertainment website too seriously.
brc 13y ago
You have hit upon a truth that many do not ever discover. What you take into your hands or eyes, you take into yourself. If you read negative hateful rubbish, it will rub off on you. If you watch a lot of pron, you will develop a warped sense of what human relationships are about. If you absorb a lot of politics from a biased (one way or the other) source, you will start to dehumanise your political opponents. Balance and real human discussions are the key. Your time is precious. Your keystrokes are precious - you only so many of them - http://keysleft.com/ http://keysleft.com/ - don't waste your keystrokes of pointless ragefests.
LordHumungous 13y ago
And Hacker News is so much better? Any social site is going to have a mix of good and bad content.
JabavuAdams 13y ago
Reddit 8 years ago was like HN now. I would learn a lot from discussions, and there was no concept of subreddits. Later, I remember being shocked to hear some co-workers who I considered kind of dumb, discussing reddit-this, reddit-that a few years ago. I occasionally visit reddit these days, but it's more as a reminder that I live in a bubble and that there's all kinds of people. It's fascinating. People are just tragically stupid, and yet the world sort of works. I wonder whether this is what the Eternal September felt like.

by rfnslyr 13y ago

tlrobinson 13y ago

The trick with Reddit is to ignore all of the default frontpage subreddits and find the niche ones that interest you. There are some great communities buried under the crap.

consultutah 13y ago

what's reddit? ;)

nabla9 13y ago

You are using reddit wrong. You don't have to use Reddit in default setting. Unsubscribe from everything and then select those subreddits that are nice. You don't have to look at comments if you don't like their contents. There are several nice and tightly moderated reddits that are great. For example /r/askhistorians and /r/askscience and several others.

glogla 13y ago
Not to mention, some of the arguments can be made about HN without changing a word. Reddit is different because people tend to chose subreddits that they care about, so the discussions are generally more positive. For example, there are small subreddits about FirefoxOS or Jolla, that contain discussions about both topics, and are quite enthusiastic. On the other hand, any HN discussion about those topics is full of people who are doing nothing but complaining, putting (the thing) down and nay-saying.
- psbp 13y ago
  I was waiting for the conclusion "just like HN", but I guess they carry the same delusions about HN not being a trite hivemind that they once did for reddit.
rfnslyr 13y ago
But that's the thing. There is no actual real reason to go on Reddit. If I want to read something about the French Revolution, I'm going to pick up a book about it by a qualified author that I'll research before hand. By simple virtue of being on Reddit, regardless of subreddit, you are wasting your own time. It doesn't matter HOW good the top comment is, ultimately it's a gamble. How do you know if what you're reading is real? Trust, I've been on the site for like 7 years now and I've been to nearly every sub deemed "worthy". Almost in every situation, I'd prefer an entirely new forum specifically dedicated to that topic. By design, it's just a comment system without any features really, and that design promotes a certain behaviour, which plagues the intention of the poster in the first place, because it's not longer about sharing information, it's about sharing information in the context of it earning more upvotes, so the content becomes corrupt.

smtddr 13y ago

>> I hate Reddit so much, it's such an absolute shit hole. Pretend like it doesn't even exist, because it shouldn't. I truly believe after spending so much time on Reddit I became a worse person. I realized after a few years after taking an objective look at my life how much I had changed. If you dwell in a medium, you tend to absorb it, and that's the only medium I dwelled in. I very strongly agree with this. When Digg did that "update-of-doom", I ended up on Reddit but I couldn't stay for longer than a year. There is way too much hate[1] on that site. And for those who say "Well, just stick with a subreddit you like" that doesn't work. Because of bitcoin, for the first time in like 3 years I went to /r/bitcoin & /r/litecoin. Didn't take me 10 minutes to run into a racist comment. For all the good deeds that happen on Reddit, I still consider it a negative net-value. 1. http://pando.com/2013/02/10/william-shatner-calls-out-reddit-for-racism-and-hate-mongering/ http://pando.com/2013/02/10/william-shatner-calls-out-reddit...

tlrobinson 13y ago
/r/bitcoin has gone to shit. Try /r/bitcoinserious
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  And then it's going to be /r/truebitcoinserious, then /r/seriouslyguysthisistherealbitcoinsubreddit, then /r/thefinalbitcoinsubredditsolution and so on and so on. It doesn't change anything. It just fragments an already shit community into a smaller shit community.
  - yk 13y ago
    Sadly this is the way of online forums. You always need to run from the trolls.
- skeletonjelly 13y ago
  or /r/buttcoin
rfnslyr 13y ago
It's actually hilarious reading some of the top posts in r/bitcoin. 18 year old basement arm chair analysts giving their fantastic insight into the future of bitcoin based on: reading a few articles, reading bitcoins whitepaper, and reading other similarly misinformed comments.

bkoa 13y ago

Honestly I think reddit has made me a slightly better person. But only because it serves as an aggregation of awful people who I strive to be as dissimilar to as possible.

devindotcom 13y ago

What do you want reddit for? Intelligent discourse, or links to entertaining content? I never went to it looking for the former, and I'm sure you'll agree it is consistently successful in the latter. The reddit population is a subset of the world, with an emphasis on pseudonymity and ignorance, much like almost any other public forum on the net. It's one fo the biggest communities, so it attracts the most assholes. They can't make you read, and they can't make you care, but apparently you have volunteered to do both!

rfnslyr 13y ago
Not going to lie I thought Reddit was the coolest and best site ever once I discovered it. Only after years of using it 24/7 have I realized how garbage it really is.

dmunoz 13y ago

> Pretend like it doesn't even exist, because it shouldn't. Why not? I get a ton of useful content from reddit, and find that the discussions in the comments are often enlightening. The biggest problem with reddit is that you have to spend some time up front customizing your subreddit subscriptions. Once you've done that, the (custom) front page still has issues, and there is still bad discussion in the comments, but I can bail out of those easily by collapsing them out of view and moving on the the next comment. Lots of people seem to want to state "I don't use reddit" lately like there is really nothing of value there. However, quite often in the comments section there are experts on the topic that provide some additional information that you likely wouldn't get by reading the same information elsewhere. Edit: Many others have commented as I was typing this, and some responses seem to indicate that even staying in so-called quality subreddits isn't enough. I would just like to point out that in certain circles, people feel the exact same way about HN, and we're all here anyway. I can't be the only one who just ignores others opinions about places and takes the good where I can get it.

rfnslyr 13y ago
That's not the point. > Why not? I get a ton of useful content from reddit, and find that the discussions in the comments are often enlightening. How are you going to determine whether a comment is bullshit or not, especially on something super niche like some very specific question in r/Askhistorians? You can't for the most part. I do agree you can find good content, but by design Reddit is flawed. The upvote system combined with anonymity is enough reason to be skeptical about everything you read. How could I possibly be in a position to judge the truth of a post on a topic that I know nothing about? That's the problem.
- Kluny 13y ago
  > How are you going to determine whether a comment is bullshit or not, especially on something super niche like some very specific question in r/Askhistorians? Boy, that sounds awfully familiar... like a very recent Bestof comment, originally posted in AskHistorians, about why reddit comments aren't useful sources for anything. Sounds like you're still reading the comments, despite your low opinion.

antidaily 13y ago

rebuttal: http://www.reddit.com/r/TheStopGirl http://www.reddit.com/r/TheStopGirl

corresation 13y ago

"The comments are always terrible. You can argue that some smaller subreddits have really good content, but do they really?" Yes, they really do. And no, the comments aren't always terrible. You can't simply make absurdly absolute statements and contrived caricatures and expect them to fly. You seem to have a deep emotional investment in Reddit, as if you put unrealistic expectations in it and now you strike out like a bitter ex-lover (alternately that you go karma bombed, turning you into a one-man anti-Reddit squad). Reddit is a large site with a lot of diverse people. Many subs are not my cup of tea (/r/wtf is the domain of teenagers), but many others make for an entertaining and often information diversion. I enjoy it. So do a lot of other people.

rfnslyr 13y ago
My post was a bit emotional yeah, just wasted way too much time on it and it shaped me in a bad way. There are some great posts/comments in very niche subreddits, but when you compare that to the entirety of the website, it's a very very small outlier. Read my comment as if you are only subbed to the defaults, since that's where OP's picture was posted, that's what I'm arguing. The existence of a few rare good comments doesn't negate all the shit that Reddit generates.
- wtvanhest 13y ago
  Each subreddit has a unique culture. Your comment just doesn't make sensw
- jmduke 13y ago
  To add to your point, I literally never go to "www.reddit.com" at this point (for reasons you outlined), but there's a lot of niche subreddits that I love on Reddit itself (/r/hiphopheads, /r/nba, /r/nfl, /r/mfa). The key seems to be heavy moderation and relatively small community size.
  - rfnslyr 13y ago
    The key seems to be heavy moderation and relatively small community size. I wish there was a site like Reddit/HN but on an invite/application basis only to consistently provide good content.

sergiotapia 13y ago

LOL - what the hell man. I've used Reddit for about 7 years now, and I've never felt what you're describing. Reddit is a glorified RSS feed with turing complete ranking system :P Why did you let yourself be so affected by something so measly? Is it the racism, sexism, [insert-ism] that gets to you?

rfnslyr 13y ago
When I was young and I found this site, I thought it was the best thing in the world. In my head, I could throw out every other site because all the links are here first! Then I saw the comments, and it's very easy to feel like you're being informed on a topic when you see it has X upvotes (if it's this upvoted, it MUST be true!) when in reality, you have no position to judge the quality of a post because you don't know enough about the topic in the first place. Now picture that, and then picture 1000 other people just like that upvoting a post, and the cycle repeats itself with every link on and on and on and on.
- sergiotapia 13y ago
  So the problem you have with Reddit is that the barrier of entry is too low? Join subreddits like /r/sciece or /r/askscience for hardcore 'truths' - they ban memes, etc. Again, it seems like you just went out of your way searching for things to hate.
  - ceol 13y ago
    The fact you claim /r/science is for "hardcore 'truths'" kind of proves you aren't in a position to talk about this. :(

WizzleKake 13y ago

reddit used to be great, but the level of discourse plummeted when it became popular. I read slashdot mostly for the comments, but I generally stay out of the comments on reddit unless I'm looking for an explanation of something that was posted. Even then, I often have to scroll through pages of idiocy and in-jokes before I find the information I'm seeking.

sergiotapia 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September ;)
rfnslyr 13y ago
It used to be indeed. Wish they made it invite only.
- supergauntlet 13y ago
  Small private subs still are good. They're honestly the only ones that are, because a ban there actually means something.

meritt 13y ago

I'd advise staying away from any sort of psuedo-anonymous discussion platform without moderation because they always end up the same. Slashdot. Digg. YouTube. Online gaming. Xbox Live. Hacker News. Your vitriol against just Reddit is a bit over the top. All of your complaints apply here too. Food for thought.

rfnslyr 13y ago
They do apply to HN, but HN is still very small compared to Reddit, and it's just one page dedicated to one (albeit) broad topic. The difference between Reddit and HN is HN has a reputation amongst a certain culture, so users fight to maintain their own reputation on here. How many times have I seen CEO's and founders of multi million dollar companies freely offer their insight on here? That's valuable, and for the most part, it's verifiable, and that matters to me, so I stick around here. It's much easier to fling shit about a photo than it is about a very specific/complex product or technology. I can't exactly bullshit my way to top comment about something I don't know anything about on HN. A lot of the users here, if you click their profile, you can find their startups, places of work, code they wrote, their blog, etc. On Reddit it's a straight up free for all.
- JabavuAdams 13y ago
  HN is what reddit was like 8 years ago.

skinnycow 13y ago

>You don't stand to gain anything from Reddit ever. The comments are always terrible. You can argue that some smaller subreddits have really good content, but do they really? Maybe you'll find a few cool links and an odd article or two. Your exaggerations and self aggrandizing is stupid and just makes you look ignorant. If fact, coming here and storming off about it the way you are says more about YOUR personality type than it does about reddit. I love how all of this is your own personal shit that you get to offload on reddit. Pathetic. Pathetic.

mandlar 13y ago

It really depends on what you subscribe to. I subscribe to things to help improve me. Things like /r/personalfinance, /r/financialindependence, /r/frugal. But most of the default reddits, yeah, they can be complete trash and a waste of your time. Unsubscribe from default reddits and pick the ones that really matter to you.

bendmorris 13y ago

>You don't stand to gain anything from Reddit ever. Oh come on, really? I'm a hobbyist game developer. I frequent a few subreddits including /r/gamedev. It's a fantastic community and I've learned a lot there, and I've been able to use it for free promotion. It's been very valuable to me and I've enjoyed using it. If your statement was "you don't stand to gain anything from /r/funny ever" I might agree with you, but this is just too broad a brush to paint hundreds or thousands of individual communities with.

rfnslyr 13y ago
You're better off going to a website entirely dedicated for that topic than sub section of a link aggregator. Why not just frequent http://www.gamedev.net/page/index.html http://www.gamedev.net/page/index.html or conceptart.org or something?
- lostlogin 13y ago
  But isn't HN just an aggregator too? Just lacking the subsections? When you get down to it, how much specialization do you want? Surely a dedicated objective C site would suit me better, or a dedicated Python site. This generalized site called HN is no good at all. I find, unsurprisingly, that reddit isn't something that is any one thing. There is some good, some bad (well, lots) and some excellent stuff (not enough though). For the record, HN provides lots of what I want, and heaps of what I don't, but with a signal to noise magnitudes higher than reddits.
  - rfnslyr 13y ago
    The thing about HN is that you can verify a lot of users on here by going to their profile and seeing who they are (for the most part), a feature Reddit does not have. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6938377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6938377
    - bendmorris 13y ago
      On some subreddits (including gamedev) your flair can say something personally identifying about you, like your Twitter handle. It's optional, but it's optional here too.

sliverstorm 13y ago

I'm fond of my local town's sub. It doesn't get many posts, and of the posts it does get I do ignore many, but overall the SNR is plenty high and I've made some nice real-life connections there.

Kequc 13y ago

Thing about Reddit is that it is the lowest common denominator. The number of people on the internet that have an account on reddit is dizzying. There is no opinion originating in real life that doesn't make it there, so you see the same bottom feeding shit that you see all over the place. It may be heightened because real life is easier to moderate. You see people who have all the terrible opinions real people do and the same unwillingness to learn. The number of people who browse and contribute to Reddit while on the toilet I would wager is quite high, it is a toilet magazine.

rfnslyr 13y ago
This is a better way to word my post.

news_to_me 13y ago

This is more or less the sentiment I have of HN, too. Basically it boils down to an echo chamber; the community selects what it wants to hear, and silences other voices. Granted, HN seems to have a more pretentious selection criteria - less-mature-sounding comments are discouraged. But it seems to me that HN has much less tolerance for diversity of opinion. But I read both HN and Reddit, as well as the comments and articles in many other places, because even though I may not agree with the attitudes or opinions, they are different perspectives all the same, and I think it's a fallacy to think that some perspectives can be of lower quality than others.

droopyEyelids 13y ago

This post has such dense irony it cracked my monitor

heed 13y ago

You make it sound like it's a fault of "reddit", whoever that is, but really it's a fault of your own. That is, you (and many others) took an entertainment website too seriously.

brc 13y ago

You have hit upon a truth that many do not ever discover. What you take into your hands or eyes, you take into yourself. If you read negative hateful rubbish, it will rub off on you. If you watch a lot of pron, you will develop a warped sense of what human relationships are about. If you absorb a lot of politics from a biased (one way or the other) source, you will start to dehumanise your political opponents. Balance and real human discussions are the key. Your time is precious. Your keystrokes are precious - you only so many of them - http://keysleft.com/ http://keysleft.com/ - don't waste your keystrokes of pointless ragefests.

LordHumungous 13y ago

And Hacker News is so much better? Any social site is going to have a mix of good and bad content.

JabavuAdams 13y ago

Reddit 8 years ago was like HN now. I would learn a lot from discussions, and there was no concept of subreddits. Later, I remember being shocked to hear some co-workers who I considered kind of dumb, discussing reddit-this, reddit-that a few years ago. I occasionally visit reddit these days, but it's more as a reminder that I live in a bubble and that there's all kinds of people. It's fascinating. People are just tragically stupid, and yet the world sort of works. I wonder whether this is what the Eternal September felt like.