Why I Cut Back on Reddit
Maaaaan, the Internet is full of rage bait now. On every website that lets you leave your thoughts, people are using that power to leave the stupidest, meanest thoughts they have.
On YouTube, a lot of people do it because they're kids who apparently do nothing else except watch YouTube and thus have very warped views of reality. On Instagram, people want attention, and if they write a stupid comment, then people will reply, which will cause the algorithm to boost that stupid comment to the top. On Twitter, people who paid for a blue check post rage bait because, supposedly, they can make money when a lot of people reply. On Bluesky... I mean, using Bluesky is less irritating than most of these, but I think this year, a lot of people who don't really understand the Internet or jokes but heard that Bluesky was the new place to go to do "activism" (posting??) made accounts but are perplexed to see that other people are using the service for things that aren't "activism."
But what about Reddit? Well honestly, in the last few years, I've found myself unsubscribing from more and more subreddits I used to like. This year I realized I was at a point where I was really only going on Reddit out of habit, and it wasn't even fun anymore. So, I figured my life might improve if I just logged out entirely. (But, to be transparent, sometimes I do still check specific things there, or browse at work when nothing is going on. I used to visit probably a dozen times a day, every day, but now I don't visit at all for most of the week).
Has the website gotten worse, or is it just me who's changed? Well, I think it might be a bit of both.
I've gotten older, and I feel like some things I just accepted when I was 18 seem more disappointing to me now. On the other hand, with a larger userbase, maybe Reddit simply has a greater number of annoying people than it did back then. Make no mistake though, there were annoying people back then too. There are certain patterns in the way people talk on Reddit that have been present for years, so I can't blame my frustration all on the site's growth.
Anyway, before I start complaining, let me compliment Reddit.
Pro of Reddit: The Downvote
I'm not gonna lie, when I see people being horrible on other social media, I really miss the downvote. It's cool that a comment just gets buried if enough people think it sucks.
Con of Reddit: The Downvote
On the other hand, we as humans cannot handle the downvote, a.k.a. the "Your opinion is wrong" button. Even if a commenter is super polite and has good reasoning that's based completely in facts, you clowns will still be like "But you're wrong" and downvote. I already know some of you are thinking "Huh? That's literally what the button is for"—and that's what's wrong with Reddit today (Get ready for "old man yells at cloud"). Subreddits used to try to encourage people to follow Reddiquette, which states that downvoting is meant for comments that don't contribute to the discussion. Some subreddits would even use CSS to hide the downvote button entirely, but the "new" Reddit sort of made that impossible.
Why do I like the idea of upvoting high-quality comments even if I disagree with them? Because then you can get an actual conversation going. Voting on which opinion we like best and hiding anything contrary feels like some weird type of mob mentality.
But I mean, ok, getting downvoted for saying something people just don't like, even if it's a harmless statement, is not that big of a deal. It does make the crowd look like sheep who are easily led astray by whoever sounds the most confident though. I mean, people will upvote stuff that's factually wrong while downvoting those who try to correct them just because they think "Yeah the vibes on the first guy are better."
But eh, that's also just human nature generally. It takes effort to pursue truth, or whatever we wanna call this.
I accept that people are going to downvote opinions they disagree with, but I still can't believe how sensitive certain subreddits are—I am of course talking about the Nintendo fans. I feel like you're gonna hurt someone's feelings for having any opinion there. It's just funny to me.
Other Good Things About Reddit
Reddit being a network of individual communities, each with their own moderators, is a good setup.
Volunteer moderators can of course go mad with power sometimes, and some subreddits literally will delete any post that goes against their talking points (it seems r/conservative does not tolerate anyone having an introspective or independent thought), but in general, experience has shown there has to be consequences for bad behavior to keep any community from turning to complete crap, so I'm glad there are mods.
If I want the answer to a very specific question, Reddit is the best place to go nowadays. LLMs are machines that will spit out answers that sound confident even if all the info is actually wrong—Redditors are the same sometimes, but that's mostly just when they want to argue. If there's a niche question, you can usually expect people with knowledge in that niche to provide helpful answers, and I would trust them over a machine.
No More Nice Things It's Time to Complain About Redditors
1. You guys really want karma huh
The big subreddits were the first ones I quit. I think a lot of people are stalking them, waiting for the perfect moment to copy and paste some generic comment that's guaranteed to get them loads of upvotes (karma).
I mean seriously, you guys are always using the same jokes. Doesn't it get old?
And it's not just jokes. When I used AskReddit, after a while I noticed I kept seeing the same opinions and factoids popping up again and again.
It gets so repetitive reading threads on the big subreddits because it's like there are bots programmed to respond to the mention of a topic with a relevant story. "Did somebody mention [famous person]??? Did you know they're actually [stupid fact designed to impress people]."
Wait... am I just describing how conversations work?
No, no, see, it's different on Reddit because it's so repetitive. People aren't injecting their own personalities into this stuff, they're seeing what gets upvotes and then imitating that. Right??
2. Childishness
I don't know how old the Reddit userbase is on average. When I signed up, I was 18, and I felt like I was one of the younger people on there (though I have no idea if I really was). But I feel like when they made an official mobile app later, it opened the floodgates for a bunch of teenagers to join.
Regardless of the actual age of users though, I notice that Redditors tend to have a somewhat immature view of the world.
I think it's pretty hard to find a nuanced discussion on Reddit. They tend to categorize people as either horrible or amazing, putting some on a pedestal while declaring their unquenchable hatred for others. This isn't at all exclusive to Reddit, of course. Actually, I think people act this way on pretty much every social media site.
But then Reddit has places like AITA where people offer their opinions on who's right and wrong in the stories people post and man I just find that distasteful. Y'all just like drama and getting to offer your opinion on said drama.
Reddit can be, unfortunately, a bit delusional about real-world events sometimes, leading to now-famous quotes like "We did it Reddit!" (some Redditors incorrectly thought they figured out who was behind the Boston Marathon bombing) and "Here's how Bernie can still win" (long after Bernie Sanders did not get the democratic party's nomination for president in 2016). And uh, last year I really became painfully aware that the stuff that gets highly upvoted on the site is generally not a good indicator of how politics are going in America.
Ha, I remember people in this one thread were like "Hey what if Kendrick Lamar made a version of 'Not Like Us' that was about Trump. 'Say Trump, I hear you like em young.'" People were upvoting these comments, bro. And you know what, that all may be cringe, but you know, living in a simpler world where we could fix everything with a song would be pretty amazing.
So I mean, overall, if you want wisdom, probably don't go to Reddit. Well, I can't say you'll never find it there, because I think there are some good comments every now and then, but I still don't think you're likely to grow much as a human being from just reading Reddit threads. But like I said, if you aren't looking for wisdom and instead just want knowledge on a specific topic, Reddit can give you that.
3. Over-valuing criticism and skepticism
I actually will give a bit of credit to Reddit (good rhyme). I think at age 18, learning to be a bit more skeptical was and has remained a useful skill for me. See, I used to go to the subreddit r/ThatHappened which is just where you post supposedly true stories you think are fake.
Yeah, it didn't take me that long on Reddit before I was on subreddits devoted to making fun of Reddit.
So anyway, because of r/ThatHappened, I got in the habit of thinking "That story sounds kind of made-up." However, it is possible to take this habit much too far and start doubting everything. Which inevitably led to the creation of the subreddit r/NothingEverHappens for the purpose of making fun of people who try to say r/ThatHappened on stories that aren't particularly unbelievable. Now, I feel like invoking the name of either of these subreddits is not a popular thing to do these days, but I don't think the culture of skepticism has changed all that much.
Here's the thing about skepticism: it's not really the same thing as intelligence. It is a skill that will help you avoid scams and, uh, pranks (yeah I mean what if you're at a slumber party bro? What if?) But skepticism alone is not enough to make you a smart person, right? You can be skeptical of, like, NASA photographs, but at that point you're just being skeptical of objective reality. That doesn't make you intelligent.
I'm just saying man. You need skepticism, but you need to learn to use it wisely.
Also I would extend this to criticism in general. I feel like much of Reddit conflates criticism with intelligence. This is not exclusive to Reddit, of course, but Reddit is traditionally a bit more pretentious than other places, so I guess it just sticks out to me.
People on Reddit enjoy being pedantic. Any opportunity to be more technically correct than someone else, someone will take it. Actually, I can't make fun of them for this, because I'm the same way. I have to just let stuff go, because a lot of "corrections" ain't really needed.
4. Really Obnoxious Chatter about Artists and Creators
One of my main uses of Reddit was to find discussions on stuff I like, from bands to video games to manga to YouTubers.
Boy, apparently that was a mistake.
This actually goes back to the part about "childishness." Ever since the internet was invented nerds have used it to voice their displeasure with whatever nerdy thing they're into. Reddit kind of just consolidated a lot of it into one website. In the past, I wanted to see what people had to say after I watched a movie or something. But man, when the people are unhappy with a new chapter of a series they've been invested in, there's a surprising number of them who start throwing a tantrum like a child who got their toy taken away from them.
My opinion is that whenever you start writing vitriolic comments directed at the people who made a series, you're just a child having a tantrum. There's no excuse for it. Learn how to behave.
Heck, that Oshi no Ko ending didn't bother me nearly as much as the whiny babies on r/manga crying about it did. And people really melted down about Attack on Titan's ending a few years back, when that final chapter was never even bad to begin with (yes that's just my opinion blah blah blah).
Actually, put aside all the talk of end chapters (it seems pretty rare for a serialized manga to have an ending that will satisfy all of these internet people), because I have issues with that subreddit beyond that. It is unfortunate, but I find that I generally don't vibe with the chapter discussions in r/manga. People are so quick to judge an entire story from a single chapter. How can you have an opinion on a story when you're in the middle of it? Do you offer an opinion on a movie when you're in the bathroom halfway through? Well if you do, then you should know that I am definitely not going to use that opinion as any sort of advice! Wait until the story is finished! Honestly, I don't know why people think the discussion on a single chapter needs to be centered on whether the arc, or series overall, is Good or not. It goes back to the Internet's strange obsession with finding a consensus on what things are Good and what things are Bad I guess.
On subreddits for specific YouTubers, Redditors love to write posts about why the latest video was disappointing. This weirds me out. They're free videos. The creators are hopefully making what they want to make. What makes you feel like you need to let the community know you want the videos to be different? I mean obviously I'm not against the concept of having an opinion. Maybe the way I perceive YouTube is different from other things, but I genuinely find the act of going to a YouTuber's subreddit to complain about or critique that YouTuber's new video to be annoying behavior.
You know what else bugs me? (And this is another thing that's not exclusive to Reddit by the way). People like to speculate about creators and phrase it as if it's a fact. You don't know what's going on in strangers' heads, you don't know their personal lives, so stop assuming your lame assumptions are facts. If an artist takes a long time to release something, people get so impatient, and I get that. But once again, anger at an artist is something I will never understand.
The entitlement people feel is just crazy.
Fans get the relationship mixed up so easily. Artists create for their own pleasure and choose to share their creations with the world. (They'll hopefully get paid for it, of course). You're affected by what they create, and you become a fan. But somehow you then start feeling dependent on the artist to make you happy. You forget what a blessing the original work was to you in the first place and start becoming upset that you're not getting what you want when you want it. You start to think you're in charge.
I mean get some gosh dang perspective. People who've never created anything, yet criticize artists with a heavy dose of self-importance in their voice are so absurd to me.
I have nothing at all against well-written negative reviews of art (well, again, unless it's on a YouTuber's subreddit, because WHY), I have nothing against expressing how desperately you want a new LP from your favorite band (I mean six years is a long time to wait for a new Kero Kero Bonito LP but at least we had those EPs but still that was a few years ago too but regardless I am keeping the faith). What I have a problem with is playing the victim and turning your anger towards the artist. You can think something sucks, but calling the person who made it mean names is not something an adult should do. Y'all need to learn how to act.
5. Overall Just a Lot of Assertions Without Knowledge
Taking a confident tone is all it really takes for Redditors to trust you, and because of this, you can write complete lies and get lots of upvotes until someone who actually knows about the subject shows up. Sure, now the correct information is available, but for all the people who saw it earlier and are never gonna come back, the damage is done. This is a problem with the whole internet, really. Once misinformation begins running rampant, the truth has a hard time catching up.
But hey, aside from outright incorrect facts, what you'll see a lot on Reddit is people who are way sure in their opinions even though they have very little knowledge on the topic at hand.
People in general need to learn that you don't actually need to have a strong opinion on every single person, event, object, or concept you come across. It's actually pretty smart to say, "I don't know much about that, and I'd like to learn more," and just not offer a take. I don't know if we're just insecure about people's perceptions of our intelligence and we just throw out opinions to help, or what.
Again, not a Reddit-specific problem, at all, really. But if you've used a lot of Reddit, you can kind of recognize that Reddit does have its own unique flavor of arrogance, right?
So uh, yeah, that's my list of reasons why I stopped going on Reddit so much.
I just figured, you know, why should I spend time on stuff that isn't benefitting me at all? It's not teaching me stuff, and I don't even find it particularly entertaining anymore.
Still, the site's ability to get you a direct answer from a human to a very specific question is remarkable, so let's keep that going. It's not like we have Yahoo Answers anymore. I like answering questions when I can, too—except since I stopped actually going on Reddit, I can't really do that anymore. Dang, I hope nobody asks something that only I would know. Of course I can't think of anything that I alone would know that someone else would ask about, so we're probably ok.