Any community dedicated to discussing a subject will head down a certain trajectory in the end, usually some kind of literal interpretation of the most extreme possible hot take.
Like the "Kids Are Fucking Stupid" subreddit for example.
It started out as basically funny gifs of children failing to grasp intuitive things, and making bad decisions in surprising and weird ways that illustrate a lack of brain capacity that we typically take for granted. Like repeatedly trying to push a toy through a solid object, or repeatedly hitting a screen door and not understanding, etc etc.
Eventually I saw a post there with a 6 month old baby flailing its arms, playing with a balloon that was tied to its wrist.
Title of post: Look at this stupid piece of shit, that doesn't do anything fucking idiot
I think Reddit structurally accelerates this process by 1) encouraging "communities" built around repeating a single specific narrative or comedic template, 2) providing the means to filter through all those iterations on the same idea and remove anything critical of the dominant thinking, complex, or challenging to the audience in any other way. 3) incentivizing individual posters to try to win that race to the bottom with a little point counter
this is where I become pedantic and ideological. personally I think the old BB-style forums had mostly the right ideas about how to design an asynchronous web message board, even if culturally they could be shitty. I think we ought to remove voting and order comments and posts strictly chronologically (and heck, why not enable more rich text features?) Reddit's design was never meant for this; it was originally just a successor to Digg and StumbleUpon and other link aggregator-type services.
That said, I understand that the Reddit lineage, not to mention the ambition to federate with other Lemmies, means these changes will never happen, so I guess the best we can do is try to be more aware of how we use this site.
i used to play wow with this guy who was like a cornerstone of our guild. very cool guy, always there to help out, friendly, well adjusted for a wow player. one day we were raiding and he had to go afk. he was gone for like 45 minutes and when he came back was just nonchalantly like "sorry about that guys, i had to give my dad his foot massage." probably the first and only time our voice comm went dead fuckin silent.
no point to this story whatsoever but you made me think of it
something like this also happens with subreddits centered around showing off the products you own, like r/EDC or r/fountainpens, where every member of the community eventually ends up buying the same things. what started as a subreddit to show off what you carry around in your pockets every day becomes a kind of club you can join by buying a certain type of pocket knife, a zippo, a handkerchief and a pry bar.
Any community dedicated to discussing a subject will head down a certain trajectory in the end, usually some kind of literal interpretation of the most extreme possible hot take.
Like the "Kids Are Fucking Stupid" subreddit for example.
It started out as basically funny gifs of children failing to grasp intuitive things, and making bad decisions in surprising and weird ways that illustrate a lack of brain capacity that we typically take for granted. Like repeatedly trying to push a toy through a solid object, or repeatedly hitting a screen door and not understanding, etc etc.
Eventually I saw a post there with a 6 month old baby flailing its arms, playing with a balloon that was tied to its wrist.
Title of post: Look at this stupid piece of shit, that doesn't do anything fucking idiot
I think Reddit structurally accelerates this process by 1) encouraging "communities" built around repeating a single specific narrative or comedic template, 2) providing the means to filter through all those iterations on the same idea and remove anything critical of the dominant thinking, complex, or challenging to the audience in any other way. 3) incentivizing individual posters to try to win that race to the bottom with a little point counter
How do we prevent that in our own forum?
this is where I become pedantic and ideological. personally I think the old BB-style forums had mostly the right ideas about how to design an asynchronous web message board, even if culturally they could be shitty. I think we ought to remove voting and order comments and posts strictly chronologically (and heck, why not enable more rich text features?) Reddit's design was never meant for this; it was originally just a successor to Digg and StumbleUpon and other link aggregator-type services.
That said, I understand that the Reddit lineage, not to mention the ambition to federate with other Lemmies, means these changes will never happen, so I guess the best we can do is try to be more aware of how we use this site.
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i used to play wow with this guy who was like a cornerstone of our guild. very cool guy, always there to help out, friendly, well adjusted for a wow player. one day we were raiding and he had to go afk. he was gone for like 45 minutes and when he came back was just nonchalantly like "sorry about that guys, i had to give my dad his foot massage." probably the first and only time our voice comm went dead fuckin silent.
no point to this story whatsoever but you made me think of it
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...end in?
Or actually going volcel. That's bound to go unironic at some point.
I mean considering how many people have announced they’ve given up porn on here, and the anti-polygamy crowd...
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Sorry meant to say Polyamory
Not really in the loop, but what's the difference?
something like this also happens with subreddits centered around showing off the products you own, like r/EDC or r/fountainpens, where every member of the community eventually ends up buying the same things. what started as a subreddit to show off what you carry around in your pockets every day becomes a kind of club you can join by buying a certain type of pocket knife, a zippo, a handkerchief and a pry bar.
You're forgetting the Colt 1911 with backup pocket .32 ACP for their Job as a Sysadmin
also a copy of the United States constitution for some fucking reason
lmao
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