There's a button on every comment that looks like this: [-]. It is how you collapse threads. I use it when I get to the part of a thread that I have already seen a thousand times. Since I have started doing this, I have noticed over time that nearly all Reddit threads across all subreddits invariably follow a certain pattern:
[-] Top comment, which is at turns informative, contrarian, or a somewhat original bit of humor
[-] Top reply, which at the very least responds to the parent comment in some meaningful way
[-] Reddit's usual 'Anne Frankly I did Nazi that coming' recycled flaming rubbish
Nothing that follows the third comment ever has any relation to the topic of the overall thread. It could be about anything, ranging from personal anecdotes and stories to literally nothing, just pattern repetition in comment form. When you hit the [-] collapse button on that third top comment, you either get to another reply to the top comment, or another top-level thread altogether, where the pattern sometimes repeats, but not as frequently. Most of the comment karma farming in any given thread happens in that one subthread that spawns after the third top comment.
It disturbs me in a way that I can't properly articulate that the website is so predictable in this way. What does it mean?
yep, this is called 'hijacking the top comment', and I'm doing it right now.
most people will read this comment before almost everything else in this thread. (if they sort by top...)
I don't think it's self-referential though; they're not making fun of themselves for the repetitiveness or predictability, they're eagerly seizing their opportunity for their turn to make the joke.
the mind runs on dialectical patterns and therefore reality and the people within it run on dialectical patterns, welcome to the cult, try not to lose your mind and start seeing triangles everywhere (just kidding hallucinating is great)
I think the there's a sort of structure that formed due to the reddit voting system and the way the human brain works. That structure was exploited by bots to farm karma for advertising, then that exploitation became part of the structure and you end up with essentially a race to the bottom as people start mimicking the bots trying to mimic people because that's what gets you karma.
It's almost certainly going to be repeated here. I think it's become so subconsciously ingrained in the way we interact online that it's naturally going to become the way people comment here, as well.
Shame they didn't implement that "chapo gold" proposal where you give gold by donating to a leftist org. I'd then gold you so hard for this.
as someone that started on 4chan in 08 or 07, i used to say that before i even used reddit
but Reddit (founded 2005) is older than Pintrest (launched January 2010)
Pintrest is a venture-capitalist blend of Reddit with recipe sites.
Reddit was more like a venture-capitalist blend of RSS with 4chan.
(edit: remember that Aaron Swartz helped create RSS, and all Reddit pages have an RSS feed if you add .rss to the url)
4chan is unironically preferable to reddit with regards to socializing, discussion, and white supremacy.
4chan is still a shithole, of course. Reddit is just worse than that.
I'd be very wary of leveling "tired jokes" as a damning indictment of an online community.
These rote phrases have become a sort of weird objective correlative.
probably not exactly what you're looking for but I can't stand how lib some subs are like DemocraticSocialism. How much they stan for the DNC is gross, considering the DNC is neither socialist nor democratic.
Even LSC lets me down when they bend down to lick the Blue Corporate Boot
The DSA sub was very heavily against Biden and pro-gun last I checked (which was admittedly like 2 weeks ago). My local chapter has been working with SRA to try and get out members trained with firearms too lol
I hate that every single political sub (and a lot of other ones) has the exact same tone of being the enlightened rational geniuses among the crowds of idiot peasants. Like, Chapo was the only I actually liked because we didn't have that smug "holier than thou" attitude about everything (we just moaned and shitposted). But if you go to r/neoliberal, r/latestagecapitalism, r/libertarian, r/politics, whatever, it's all the exact same tone. it's like talking to the exact same person, but with differing views every time
So basically this, we are all the shill responding to itself.
(I only post Alan Watts somewhat ironically, because I think much of his mysticism amounts to an apathist position (1, 2), encourages an enlightenment which is detachment; and sees our highest calling as an inward journey rather than outward actions)
That said, Alan Watts does provide some nice observations and metaphors, like this one about a dandelion seed which could be compared to memes/culture/indoctrination/propaganda in general.
Rather than acting ourselves, we should encourage others to act, and create the context in which they act as we desire. It is like the invention and implementation of up/down vote, which leads people towards agreeableness, intent to contribute, and ideological homogeneity.(just consider how much more aggressively disagreeable people are on Facebook and Twitter which does not have a downvote)
The problem on Reddit is that what people seek is what they also create; the meme threads are the good stuff to them, and involvement in them is seen as contribution.
Even the contrarian attitude that most Redditors exhibit is agreeableness in so far as they are contributing what they consider to be valuable, and it gets the upvotes.
Actual substantive disagreement with the majority, or direct personal attacks, are rare and get systematically downvoted out of view.
Redditors will gladly use slurs and say terrible things about groups, but they don't so much do it towards individuals; they often oppose ‘acts of racism’ but not racism as a whole.(obviously, there are many kinds of Redditors and subreddits, I don't mean to say they are a monolith, but it is clear enough to whom I refer)
To have a better culture under a system with up/down votes similar to Reddit, a strong shared idea of what constitutes a valuable contribution is important to maintain.
I think the best way to do this is not via moderation, but via struggle session type things where the opinions and actions of the majority (or large fractions of thereof) are challenged.
When a moderating group tries to force unpopular rules, the only thing that happens is user revolt, disengagement, and eventual decline.
Moderation is effective only against a disruptive or harmful minority of users. I've seen this same thing play out on Reddit over and over...A good culture requires being proactive, setting standards before things get out of hand, and repeatedly arguing against bad takes rather than banning them outright.
(the recent Twitter approach of fact checking Tweets in line seems like a useful one; admins should consider adding 'mod notes' or 'struggle session link' at the top of post descriptions, rather than just deleting things)The first few members always define a culture for years to come; doesn't matter if its a subreddit, company, organization, anything really. This is exactly the power of being proactive.
We have to change things before the majority starts to adopt harmful attitudes, because then it becomes so much more difficult to improve things.Anyway, that's my take.
Downvote pig poop balls, it is disgusting and encourages shock humor. It drives away people with the self-respect not to look at poop on balls.
And it is totally speciesist that this scatporn is allowed at all. It is for the greater good.
There's definitely similar "holier than thou" bullshit with the Chapoverse. But it doesn't seem to be as common.
But the whole "unironically calling people lib when they believe a slightly different path to socialism exists" thing happens with some regularity.
Maybe it's too late for here, but I honestly think the voting system is toxic to productive dialogue and to funey joeks
I think it turns discussions into a game a little too much. People get addicted to the points and get mad when they're not winning.
It's useful for sorting the boring comments though, so idk what they best solution is.
The number causes groupthink. Higher numbers maker people more likely to upvote and the inverse for lower numbers. I like the "show the amount of each" feature here and think it alleviates some of the issues, but I still think up/downvotes are easily rigged and designed to give dopamine hits rather than be representative of the validity of ideas.
TBH now that I can see when someone downvotes me, which is still pretty rare here but used to be frequent on Reddit before they hid comment scores, it makes me introspective and self-critical, I think that part is good. We should know in real-time when someone doesn't like what you said. Negative feedback is one of the things I like most about the internet in general, I'm used to writing in newspapers where your critics have to go through a snowstorm of filters before you hear what they have to say. And sometimes it's just easiest for someone to tell you "no" without leaving a message. Of course I am curious what they object to but nobody's got time for every dumb thing someone says online. Maybe if we had other ways to downvote, like "this is incorrect," "this is something I disagree with," "this is going to get somebody killed," that sort of thing. Emojis instead of votes.
I am pretty sure that the people who downvote me on Reddit or elsewhere are the people I would have the most interesting and illuminating discussions with but we rarely ever get to that point, and that's 100% down to the voting system. It didn't used to be like this on the old message boards in the 90s and early 00s.
Honestly, it was mostly flame wars and 1000 post threads of two people just fucking savaging each other. I am not suffering from some nostalgia where I'm reminiscing about the good old days of online boards. They were just as shit as online discourse is now. But you didn't have this universal expectation that everyone is supposed to have good manners to each other. The mods in those days were Nazis but they'd only step in when the flame war was about to turn into an actual fistfight IRL, or when it just got too annoying for them to handle. There's a space in-between a good old-fashioned throwdown fight and people just being shitheads online that's gone missing in the last ten years or so.
I just wish more people would comment with why they disagree rather than only downvoting.
Maybe my comments just tend to be too long...
I'll have a go at this one. The nested comment system combined with the voting algorithm reinforces the lowest common denominator of conversation, whatever that ought to be called. This means you get improvements over the old vBulletin system of timestamped hierarchy, but there's only so good the conversations can tend to get. Basically, when someone makes a good post, it's almost an accident. When there are enough users, the voting system will, well, flatten the curve. With 100-200 people who share common interests it works fine, but past that it degenerates into the same useless noise you'd find on television or something similar.
There seems to be a critical threshold between quality and participation, after which someone needs to step in and direct the show, so to speak. This is why all subs get good as they are picking up steam and then get worse once the rest of the site finds them. We saw this in CTH after the sub hit around ~50k subscribers.
Well I really like how the top comment in a thread doesn't stay that way. On Reddit there's a problem where getting to a thread first puts it front and center. That isn't happening here except in very low-participation threads. I still have my old Reddit habits from using this site, like checking my profile page to respond to reply alerts, and I've been delighted to see that new posts in an old thread rise to the top. So the new sorting algorithm seems to help. Whoever's idea that was, they have my kudos.
Okay so CCP shill here, but I quite like the system in r/sino.
Most, if not all, of the threads have comments with a hidden score. Only the truly terrible/derivative/bait are hidden away, but you can still click on it to see the comment, as well as the many replies below. I feel like that helps reduce bias when I evaluate comments, because I'm considering the comment's content by itself, and ignore the 'popularity' of the comment. It also helps you critically appraise arguments/discussions, as you consider what the comments are actually arguing for instead who has the highest score.
Sure thing, here' s one: https://old.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/if3s7b/huaweis_future/
So far there are no hidden comments in this thread
To add to this, I think you have to ask why it's important that others can see the upvotes/downvotes of a post? Is the location of the post not enough?
As much as I want to think of myself as a critical thinker if I see someone with a heavily downvoted post I will think it's bad before I read it and vice versa for a heavily upvoted post.
Starter pack memes, which just seem to be a way to mock and trivialize anyone who isn’t a middle class (or higher) cishet white male
The same old insipid uninspiring comments everywhere and the racism.
I gave up on Reddit once I realized I could predict exactly what the top comments in any thread would be. Came back for Chapo, than left for Chapo chat.
I'm more challenged trying to think about areas of reddit I DON'T find annoying or fucked up
Many of the "ask" subreddits are great, askhistorians, askscience, askanthropology, etc.
Yeah, basically the least reddit subreddits are the best. Which really tells you something.
I'm gonna be straight up with you here: I don't want this place to be reddit. I think it being a forum where we can all just talk is great to me. In fact, if anything, we'd probably do well to have a tagging system rather than communities so that people can just post what they feel like, then tags can help them filter. I've just done /main for awhile now and that seems to be the best way to get eyes on your posts.
Some LGBTQ and trans communities are pretty ok. Smaller subs dedicated to niche hobbies (of course it depends). Sigmarxism is also wholesome.
That fucking sub that's like unbghhtctigivt or some shit and is like wow girls can do stuff too, get a life you fucking nerds.
I really dislike how hateful and toxic the larger communities are, they straight up give no fucks about being considerate and helpful. Being inflammatory to another in your community is not necessary.
There's just no need to be so rude when it comes to super low stakes opinions on cake or whatever. I feel like they forget each commenter is a human being. It's not even like I've been flamed, I just don't like to lurk in these toxic communities. It kind of ruins the mood of the day, yknow?
Casual misogyny is another major bummer, it really reinforces that some people have terrible opinions of your gender. And who knows who has these opinions? Your boss, your co-worker, your relatives? It cements the feeling that misogyny is everywhere, and who knows how many times opportunities have been denied to you because of that.
