Reddit sucks

I’m disgusted with the things that Reddit has done to the internet. I know that nothing I’m about to say is anything new, or fascinating. I’m saying it to say it. Reddit is a loathsome shithole of no value to anyone. I want you to think about a subject you are intimately familiar with. Got it? Good. Go read about that subject on Reddit now. You’ll find bullshit for miles. Try to correct some of that bullshit, I dare you. You’ll be ignored at best, and barraged with downvotes and “AKSHULLY” at worst.

Reddit is a cesspool of misinformation, ignorance, and elitism. Even if you don’t post there, and are trying to just read inconsequential threads about whatever, you’ll notice something about how redditors write their posts. It’s hard to describe, and isn’t always there, but when you read it enough, you can recognize it. It’s like trying to read something written by Peggy Hill. The writer knows almost nothing about what they’re talking about, but they’re acting like an authority on it. This insipid, sanctimonious writing style liquifies my brain a little more every time I encounter it.

I'm not trying to discourage reddit use because that's futile. We're in it for the long haul, folks. This was written by me as a coping mechanism because I can't believe how ridiculous of a place reddit is. I didn't use it in any real capacity until relatively recently. Sure, I had an account, but I'd go elsewhere for information. It wasn't until Google became useless a few years ago that it ended up as a fixture on my radar. I avoid it like the plague at this point, because it's basically just 4chan for people too afraid to use 4chan.

I first heard about reddit some time in 2009 on 4chan of all places. It had been compared to eBaums World, which is a place I had little experience with. Like with most things that 4chan hates, redditors as they are called, were subject to witch hunts there. Anyone that posted anything another user didn't like would be refered to as a redditor among various other invectives. I never considered the idea that 4chan could ever be right about something. it was a place I would go to fuck with people and I assumed that was what everyone was doing. They were right though, reddit is a "cancer killing the internet". I've never in the 17 years I've know about 4chan believed anything read there. Perhaps I was wrong to be so critical of the place, or maybe a broken clock is right sometimes. I don't know.

While reddit is indeed a shittier version of 4chan, that was never the plan. Reddits fundemental structure is the same, but there are accounts, and users are allowed to create their own boards. Garbage threads aren't removed though the creation of new threads, they're left to fester in inrelevance permanently. Users aren't motivated by a desire to fuck with people. Rather, they're motivated by the vote system. Upvotes on reddit apparently lend credibility. This system leads to spam, hyperbolic takes, vehiment tribalism, and general disorder.

The only other notable distinction between 4chan and reddit is the only one that truly matters. I can't find blatant bigotry there. I think this lends to it's undeserved credibility. The lack of bigotry doesn't make a place worthy of your time. That should be the status quo. The bar for what is acceptable should be raised, because it's making everyone stupider the longer we accept garbage like reddit as a source of information, discussion, or even mindless entertainment. From what I can tell, there are no communities of value on reddit, which I can't say of 4chan. Places like /v/ at least are decent if you're looking for new, interesting games to play. I first found Minecraft on /v/ in 2010, long before anyone else was playing it. There's nothing like that on Reddit because posting obscure things doesn't get you attention, and could in fact, cause you upvote count to go down, which for some reason matters to these people. Bad threads on 4chan simply disappear after a few hours. The following is a board that I pray someday implements a similar system.

Where everyone has beaten Ninja Turtles

4chan wasn't great for discussing NES games back in the day. /vr/ didn't exist at the height of my usage of that site, and any thread I'd make would die. With good cause, knowing old me. This lead me to find Nintendoage.com, which was a forum that had a massive bend toward the NES, There was a huge amount of information available there, and it's demise is a tragedy. even so, it wasn't perfect by any means.

Nintendoage could a horrible place in many ways. There was rampant elitism, scammers, cliquish behavior, and indecipherable in jokes that got run into the ground. I guess that makes it your typical forum. Not perfect, but servicable. Even so, compared to r/nes, Nintendoage at it's worst could never reach the absurd lows of r/nes. Nintendoage threads would sometimes devolve into in joke riddled shitflinging contests. You could avoid those threads though, and easily find others that contained real discussion or information. Browsing r/NES as I write this, it’s people spamming pictures of NES cartridges for upvotes. I am sure it’s still like that as you read this. I’ll wait while you go check. I guarantee you it’ll be that, or someone announcing they beat Castlevania or TMNT. The vast majority of the board is shameless spamming. The board is an endless stream of people with zero self awareness posting pictures of common games and end screens for surface level games everyone has beaten.

Endless spam

Once you wade through the flood of spam, you'll find that the discussion they do have is of poor quality. There's a “clean and repair megathread” where one of the pieces of advice for repairing your console is “use a game genie, the board is thicker”. The rest of the advice consists of vague instructions like “disassemble and clean it” without explaining how to do so or why you even should. That thread is going to lead to the permanent destruction of so many NES consoles. r/NES solely exists for people to farm karma. People comment on these spam posts with vague praise and move on. Even they know there's nothing of note about the things they're posting. I don’t mean to sound like an asshole, but what motivates this behavior? It can't just be the Karma farming. Something has to be going on here. Why would you think anyone cares that you beat Cowboy Kid? I don’t know you, I don’t have any frame of reference for what skills you have, and I didn’t watch you accomplish it. Nobody cares but you, and that's okay. there's no sense of community on r/nes. There are 100k+ people subscribed to this shithole. Even anonymous 4chan boards have some sense of community. There was genuine discussion there, and people got to know each other. /v/ had blue sheets guy, who would show up when people played “/v/ingo” You had tripcode users like Onsokumaru, whom everyone hated vehimently simply for having the audacity to exist. This entire board, or subreddit (look I don't know) is fundementally broken.

There are scenarios where people care that you beat/bought a game. Generally, it requires a community to exist. It requires familiarity. None of that exists on r/nes so theres nothing about the place that encourages the fostering of one. What we have here is a place that exists solely to stroke fragile egos. The kind of person that would continously spam a subreddit like that isn't worth your time. If they had something of value to say, they'd probably opt to say it somewhere more reputable anyway.

reverse /pol/

r/politics is another subreddit that I sometimes encounter. I will not be refering to any specific posts this time because I don't want to post potential political misinformation, even if I'm dunking on it. I’m not into political discussion, which would make r/politics a great place, in theory, since none of value occurs there. I consider it to be on the same level as 4chans /pol/. A poorly moderated echochamber of no value to humanity. It’s just lunatics screaming into the void and at eachother. Hyperbole is ramapant, and it's seemingly contagious

Yes, Trump is absolutely a horrible president and he shouldn’t be anywhere near that office. You don’t have to make up scenarios that would never happen, act like they are happening, and then yell at people who say “that’s not happening.” The vote system ensures that only the most hyperbolic, lowest common denominator posts reach anyones eyes. What you end up with is a lot of scared people posting conspiracy theories that end up leaking into other subreddits, which in turn, scares even more people. Conspiracy theories are not necessary in situations where the truth is insane in the first place.

I find it bizarre that people that clearly and rightfully hate Fox News are employing the very same tactics they use. It’s extremely dangerous in the long run. I, a man that votes progressive, see the things that these people are posting and think to myself “maybe Trump is right, maybe these people really are lunatics”. Until I remember I’m on Reddit. What about people that can’t make that distinction though? They’re all over the place. If the internet is any kind of indicator, people there don't think critically very often. What happens to them? Maybe that’s why America is stuck with that fat piece of shit for the next four years?

From my vantage point, it would appear that Reddit generally aligns with my own personal politics. It's distressing to me that Reddit's vote system manipulates it's users into acting like hyperbolic attention seeking grifters. I don’t want people like that representing values that I hold. It'd never be an issue if not for the fact that people genuinely believe reddit to be a source of real information.

ditch everyone you know, the world is scary

r/AmItheAsshole is a subreddit where people go to stories of interpersonal conflict and ask if they’re being an asshole. I admit, several of these stories are entertaining to some degree. The whole thing falls apart when it comes to determining whether or not the person is in fact, an asshole. See, stories have two sides. You’re only getting one side, nobody in the comments ever takes the time to ask “is this the truth?” or “what does the other side say”. With a concept like this, you’ll inevitably find people posting solely for validation. Which makes it like several other subreddits, but with extra steps. I can see scenarios where someone horrible makes a thread on r/AITAH specifically with the purpose of gaslighting their spouse or some other poor soul. Abusive people are great at spinning sob stories and your average reddit poster is stupid enough to buy ‘em. So all you need to do to convince your spouse that your controlling behaviour isn’t abuse is by posting about it on reddit and forcing them to read all the NTA replies.

what

The whole thing relies on taking things at face value and hoping for the best. Sometimes, people are considered assholes. However, it’s only because they misjudge the general opinions of the subreddits denizens. Nobody goes there for the purpose of self reflection. Even if they did, self reflection can’t be attained by asking strangers on the internet to take a story at face value and judge the actions taken within it. You have to look in the mirror and ask yourself “am I okay with the thing I did?” and go from there. It’s definitely in character for a redditor to take this half assed approach though.

I’m done talking about this. I think I’ve made my point. Reddit sucks, and so do the people that post there. I’m glad that it exists though. It reminds me a lot of Facebook. Facebook consolidates all of the old people online and occupies them enough to prevent them from shitting up the rest of the internet. Reddit also does this, but with self righteous millennials. I lament the death of forums that occured because of Reddit. Why join multiple forums when you can join a conglomerate with a single all encompassing account. It sounds decent enough on paper.

The problem with making things simple enough for stupid people to use is that stupid people will use them. Not everyone on Reddit is stupid, of course. Still, it's incredibly easy to find a stupid person there. I don't fault anyone for using reddit to do anything. What I fault people for is attempting to use it as a source of information. We should look at that the same way someone citing 4chan would be looked at. Nobody believes a thing 4chan says, and the same should be true for reddit. Maybe I'm late to the party and this is already common knowledge. I didn't bother to read other opinions on the site because I wanted to make sure mine weren't influenced by anything. I won't be reading any further into this, as I'm not interested in masochism.