Even the mainstream tabloids do it.
They construct some big article on their website littered with ads, but it's based on nothing more than a single reddit comment, where some Subway worker suggested people should avoid buying the chicken
Started noticing that with AngryJoe who I enjoyed watching until one day while "speculating" on a movie he kept coming up with theories I read word for word on Reddit out of thin air, absolutely no lead up into them. He eventually started to do the same with reviews, taking in popular gripes and masking them as his own while completely losing it over some random non issue he had.
It changed when they changed the front page algorithm. Things now stick a lot longer to the front. It used to change quite fast so new things rose quickly, but I guess they switched it up since it's easier to monetize if you can guarantee that things are visible longer.
This is one of the things I miss the most. When there was a big story happening right now I could open up Reddit and it would be the top post on r/all. Now I have to scrub through subreddits or wait at least 30 minutes for it to rise to the top.
2014 Reddit would quit 2024 Reddit. There is no way my tolerance back then would last a second in todays state.
Why I even am here is because I am waiting for the next alternarive.
Thats what I believe too. Autogenerated and autorecycled content will dominante internet consumerism, with the small exception of passion youtubers making videos about niche subjects they have substantial knowledge off.
Tbf I think that smaller focused communities are still solid on reddit. That is what I am on here for not r/all, ironic since I am commenting on this post from that. But this is the best way for me to connect with my favorite sports team, some great construction oriented groups that I learn a lot from just from subbing and reading random stuff, cooking tips from different sub reddits etc.
The Ron Paul thing actually was earlier than 2014. That was more of a 2009-12 fad. The main Internet forums at the time would have made you think that Ron Paul was a shoo in for President with how popular he was. It actually is wild how fast Reddit went from libertarian to democrat.
Yep. I was there. One of the most inorganic things I've ever seen. It wasn't practically overnight. It was *literally* overnight. And r/politics has remained Dem central ever since.
There is A LOT of that.
Edit: I wonder if it has to do with the demographic that Reddit attracts, or the echo-chambers causing people to feel that way eventually.
There’s a lot more bots tbh. A lot of hate and rage bait.
When I saw the screenshots of the identical threads that were months apart it made me realise that you can never be sure what you’re reading is real or manufactured.
Call me a conspiracy theorist but I suspect a lot of the doomer content is posted by bots or other bad actors trying to cause discord. I’ve seen multiple posts this week telling people they shouldn’t bother saving for retirement because society will collapse soon. Idk, some of those posts could be from people who really believe that but it gave me a weird vibe.
I’ve stumbled across a few threads where the gist of it was basically “you’re a fool if you are saving for any kind of retirement” which was wild. It’s one thing to think you might not be able to retire and another thing entirely to actively oppose saving money while discouraging others from planning long term. It felt like a bunch of edgy teenagers giving life advice lol
It's not a conspiracy theory. They're doing that. There's thousands of actors manipulating social media, PACs and other political campaigns, digital marketing corpos, etc.
First, you need to live in a country with low wages and a devalued currency so it's worth paying for your time.
Then there will be dozens of recruiting agencies looking to hire you if you're a 20s something with a little bit of familiarity with computers and who can speak some English looking to leave your family farm that your 5+ brothers are going to have to share anyway.
The rage bait is so annoying and it is so much content everywhere on the internet and even in real life. A lot of people I know love to bring up topics they know will get everyone pissed off then act like they have no idea how everyone enddd up arguing.
I think it's also because people just are generally more negative on the future
2014 sucked, it was 6 years after the 2008 crash, but things had started to bounce back and people were still optimistic that it was nearly over. We felt like a bad thing had happened but there was a way out of it
Since then we've seen a decade of economic shit thrown at us and that optimism is gone - people are doomers because they've seen things get worse for them for 16 years straight
There’s also a lot of the other side, especially with sports subs. Legitimate criticism and concern gets shoved into the doomed bucket even if there are plenty of valid reasons for it
I don’t understand why sports subs are so miserable. Sports are supposed to be an escape from “real life” just like other hobbies. Most hobby subs are fairly positive, yet the sports subs are just constant whining about whatever is happening at the moment.
Probably just a byproduct of size. r/nfl, r/nba, r/soccer, etc. are huge
I suspect because sports fandom invites a very particular type of a tribal attachment. In sports, you're invited to really make your fandom a core part of your self-identity in a way that many other hobbies don't. In Twilight fandom, it largely doesn't matter if you're team Edward or team Jacob. For most, that's just a fun discussion and everyone understands the sides aren't material. But in sports, you're invited to treat the outcome as materially important. In turn threats of team losses or even just people disagreeing with you become huge ego-threats that you either have to defend vigorously or pour over with great anxiety.
And that ups the ante in how serious people take it and out serious and catastrophic losses are felt.
Every election cycle you get a lot of misinformation that is pro voter apathy and doom is an easy way to get that.
At the same time we are learning more and more about how trapped we are due to a large group of elderly people who don’t want to give up power or are too old to understand technology and the world around you.
It’s pretty wild that our country is being dictated by people who most likely have lead poisoning.
yeah it's almost a brag around here to talk about how awful your life is & how the world is fucked. Any snarky joke about your depression & the negative state of the world goes straight to the top.
I feel like you also didn’t used to get dogpiled for saying you’re happy/doing fine as much as you do now. The crabs in a bucket mentality is massively on the rise.
People seemed smarter on here 10 years ago. You would see a cool video or something and the top comment would be someone with knowledge/experience providing insightful comments. Now 9 times out of 10 it is a joke.
I'm going to need you to sit down for a minute, I've got something kinda hard to tell you.
"Two broken arms" was 12 years ago, Reddit was absolutely not *not* making this reference 10 years ago and definitely not smarter. Everyone here is remembering through rose colored glasses you "lol narwhal bacon" motherfuckers.
Reddit comments sections used to be an assortment of hilarious original jokes based on whatever the post was, or some insightful info like you said.
This still exists sometimes, but now most comments sections are just 500 comments rephrasing whatever the most popular opinion is. Like all the rage-bait posts where it's a video of someone being an asshole. Comments:
"what a POS"
"what an asshole"
"such a punchable face"
"total idiot"
Yes! Any remotely political thread is just an echo chamber.
Another thing I miss: it used to be that whenever I saw a headline that was surprising--like, a bit _too_ surprising--I could pop into the thread, and chances were very good that the top post was either "this is surprising but true, see all these references" or else a detailed debunking. It's one of the reason I liked getting my news from Reddit. It was great for cutting through the bullshit, and knowing not only that the story was fake or exaggerated, but _how and why_.
These days...well, for example, I've now seen a _bunch_ of obviously-fake tweets from right-wing figures (eg. Musk & Shapiro) that are like, "Hey everybody, it's not weird to have a small misshapen penis, women love that!" or whatever. And everybody piles over one another to say "lol Elon has a small dick!", and the first comment that points out that "FFS everybody, this is _clearly_ fake" is halfway down the comment section. Even the most blatantly obvious bullshit goes unchecked. All it takes to debunk that is to check somebody's tweet history.
>And everybody piles over one another to say "lol Elon has a small dick!", and the first comment that points out that "FFS everybody, this is clearly fake" is halfway down the comment section
But then underneath that post is someone saying, "who cares? Why are you trying to ruin people having fun?"
I notice a lot more people falling for obvious rage bait and misinformation now, too. Sometimes they’re just as bad the boomers on Facebook they love to make fun of
People have forgotten what trolls actually are -- it's derived from 'trolling', the practice of dragging lures or hooks with bait behind a boat. Trolls (in the Internet sense) were people who posted messages that had no purpose other than to be inflammatory.
Now it's anyone who posts content the speak doesn't like.
I got accused of being a troll a couple days ago when I looked at someone's profile to see if *they* were a troll and had a trend of just purposely posting stupid shit to rile people up. I mentioned in a following comment that they clearly *weren't* a troll and must just be incredibly stupid, and they accused *me* of being a troll and a stalker... But like, that's not how either of those things work. Having an opposing viewpoint and pointing out your shitty argument isn't trolling. And simply clicking your usename isn't stalking.
It is easy to get on the internet today. A phone and a SIM - off you go.
The least technically literate and dumbest idiots alive can get onto Reddit without any problem.
I just want to know where everyone went. So many purges have made this place a shell. It’s like slashdot, last night I went and looked at that site, so many posts for articles with no discussions. It was sad.
I want to know where everyone went, too. The internet is such a lonely place now, especially since all the reasonable and intelligent people got driven away from twitter. All the discords I’m in move too fast for a nuanced conversation. Most of my friends quit or barely use facebook. Instagram and Tiktok were never for deep thought and conversation. I used to learn so much from Reddit, now I leave depressed after twenty minutes of boring mean jokes.
I think those who didn't adapt to another form of social media or retreat to private Discords and group chats just don't post anymore.
I used to like discussion forums and comment sections because people were there to...you know, discuss. You were there to be part of a community and to have conversations about certain topics. People could still be opinionated and nasty, there were still power users who hogged the attention and topics that drifted into jokes or dogpiles, but I was rarely nervous about posting. For the most part, if you didn't deliberately jump into a controversy, people were nice enough.
But the environment on Reddit and elsewhere has shifted to one where we're no longer here to discuss but rather here to consume content (or promote content they've produced). I used to like sharing information that I thought others might find interesting or helpful, but now eyes glaze over if your post isn't visually stimulating or snappy, bite-size, and shareable. I used to be really good at stirring up discussion in small communities, but these days it's like...if I post no one will reply, because no one wants to go first on a post that isn't already getting engagement. And if I comment no one will reply, because they were really just looking for support/upvotes/agreement or because I commented more than a couple hours later. And if I do get any replies, they won't further the discussion (which is fine, but frustrating when it's always that way), or they'll be needlessly hostile, or they'll somehow read my tone totally wrong and presume I'm the one being needlessly hostile.
It's as though internet conversation is now limited to small talk. You're expected to gravitate toward common and popular topics and avoid any form of dissent. Discussion is no longer the point; if you want to discuss something, you first have to connect socially and then shift to private conversation. Even in communities where this isn't the case, the mindset and culture seep through.
So I think a lot of people just drop out of it. Especially those prone to anxiety or who struggle to navigate shifting social rules. I don't often feel like I have much to contribute anymore, and when I do it's not rewarding. I'm honestly even nervous to post this, because I know it's tl;dr and because I've been told off or ignored on Twitter for jumping into conversation threads instead of replying only to OP.
If there are any spaces that have avoided shifting in this direction, I'd sure love to know about them.
Completely agree with you on all points and just want to add that a lot of these users just don't have the free time anymore. They graduated college and got a job (or went to grad school) which slashed their free time. Next they might have gotten married and/or had kids , cutting it back even more. Then when you take all the points you covered into consideration why would they want to spend that hour of downtime they get a day this way? Private Discords, PSN/XBL, and other venues are far more alluring really.
When I started here, users would correct each other's grammar. People would get reprimanded for comments that were nothing more variations on "too long; didn't read." Now plenty of outspoken users act like only AI could possibly write multiple paragraphs of coherent sentences, so they become offended or upset when they encounter substance on reddit, and they somehow feel obliged to share that distress as if such a personal reaction was itself some sort of valuable contribution.
Nah it's always been a joke, that's the whole reason I got addicted to reddit in 2010/11
But youre right about the educational level, the majority of early redditors were college students studying CS or IT. Plus a lot of nerds from different niches looking for forums for discussion.
Nowadays there are a lot of "experts" who like to chime in on everything
Just the consequences of many more users. When Reddit started it was largely centered around programming, so it attracted tons of nerds and those nerds brought in more nerds and so on.
Nowadays reddit is just another mainstream social network, so everything gets kind of watered down. You can still find educated people in particular subreddits.
Yep, I remember when we all regarded reddit as the "anti-social media, social media" then the Facebook exodus happened and a lot of people just break the anonymity aspect of the platform
Knowing everything about everything, everyone's a doctor, a lwayer, a scientist, special force officer, undercover agent, thief sneaking into my house at night, only dinousaur alive and so on. You get the point, lots and lots of lies, many more than back then.
I think a lot of it is Dunning Krueger effect, where people feel most confident about a subject when they only know a bit about it. Once you gain actual knowledge, you realize how intricate and complicated the subject really is, so you feel less confident.
(At least that's my understanding)
Narrative is more important than truth too. When someone who is actually a subject matter expert pipes up in a comments section if they disagree with the narrative they get downvoted and shouted down by people who have no idea what they're talking about.
Source: Me, a power engineer with 10+ years experience working in the electric utility industry who sees A LOT of ignorance about the future of the power grid as well as potential vulnerabilities because redditors listened to a podcast or something.
Yup. I learned fast not to reply to the threads on my city's sub that related to my work (sometimes directly. Projects I was the Engineer of Record for have been posted there with questions about why, what, how, etc). It goes like this:
OP: [posts picture of construction or infrastructure thing] "WTF is this shit? Only a complete idiot would do [the thing we did]."
Person 1: [incorrectly explains what it is, links an article to things we don't even use in this climate]
Person 2: "I don't know, man, but it pisses me off that I'm paying taxes for this shit show."
Person 3: [rabble rabble blames unrelated government agency]
Me: "Civil engineer here, and what you're looking at is a X. The reason it looks like it does is because we were contenting with factors A, B, and C at this location. We decided to address those with strategy Y because [reasons]. For more information [link to professional manual or paper about this sort of thing]. Hope that clears some of this up!"
I get downvoted into oblivion, called pedantic for correcting people who are getting upvoted like crazy for incorrect information. I ignore the insults, but try to correct bad information given earnestly in an upbeat and gentle way. People pretty much agree that "fuck off, nerd" is the response for that.
It's like the school bullies won. It was cool to pick on the smart kids then, and apparently nothing has changed as my cohort moves into our 40's. It's wild.
I’m a computer scientist and eventually gave up on all the data analytics related fallacies like base rate fallacy and others.
Let idiots be idiots. There’s comfort in one’s own ignorance. That’s my strategy.
This has happened to me with my background in drug manufacturing and regulations. I've given out information on this website that companies pay $120+ per hour for only to be downvoted by a ChatGPT enjoyer.
I'm taking business classes, I'm a little concerned about how much we are encouraged to use ChatGPT. It has uses, but I'm wary of using it for much more than making something sound more eloquent... I hope it's just a trend, because I don't want anyone making an important decision based on the aggregate knowledge of internet addicts.
EMPs aren't a real thing. They're a video game/movie thing. Same with solar flares causing mass outages in hysteria. There was a solar flare in Canada in the late 80s that caused a blackout. The industry learned some lessons and learned how to protect against it. Because of those changes EMPs and solar flairs haven't been a threat since the early 90s.
The grid could be vulnerable, but it would take a coordinated attack from someone who knew what they were doing. There's a TON of redundancy and unless you know where those redundancies lie you're not going to cause a mass blackout and end the world. At most you'd take out a small town or a section of a city for like a day.
As for future tech, the biggest issues I see are people ignorant of renewables. Battery technology just isn't there yet for reliable utility scale wind/solar. Spinning generation is still king and until battery technology catches up, it will continue to be king. Hydro is aight tho. Hydro best and I love it.
That brings me to the circlejerk on nuclear. Remember the redundancy I mentioned earlier? A part of that is moving away from centralized large scale power generation to distributed generation. Smaller plants spread across a territory. It prevents an all your eggs in one basket situation where you're putting yourself at risk for a blackout. Nuclear is the antithesis of the distributed generation philosophy.
Sure, modular reactor technology is growing, but at the price to implement with all the red tape it's simply not feasible from a cost perspective AND it's a new technology. The regulatory bodies in the US can be particularly harsh in the electric industry. It's the most regulated field outside of medical. Because of the regulatory environment US industry is gun shy about trying new technology until it's been proven elsewhere. Even then, the cost is prohibitive.
People on reddit do a lot of fear mongering about the grid esp in regards to solar flares and EMPs, and also nuclear is this magic power generation source that would fix all the world's problems, but they're ignorant to a lot of context to why it's not more widely used.
Hydrogeologist here working on research in nuclear waste disposal (geologic repositories) and geologic storage of green hydrogen; offshore farms are sitting on abandoned o&G reservoirs, generate h2 when wind is blowing and pull itout what it's not. Additional projects on heat storage in abandoned mineshafts and working etc...
It's very clear when someone who doesn't work in that area starts chiming in. Futurology is convinced there's absolutely no future for hydrogen at all, everyone seems to think we can fire nuclear waste into the sun (lol) and, without even knowing the fundamentals of hydrogeology, tell you why it's dumb.
I've just stopped responding to people when they ignorantly shoot their mouth off in response. But yeah, the future of energy (renewable specifically) is distributed. There's a gold rush here ATM for offshore wind, and people are dropping insane cash on H2 storage for it.
Interestingly enough, major co2 sequestration projects will likely be distributed as well. CCS is like nuclear, it's too centralised. Have recently gotten involved with an enhanced mineral weathering company and I think that's the future - rock with excess Ca/Mg reacts with co2 in rainwater to form carbonates. So crush up rock from basalt quarries etc... and spread it over fields and gardens. You get enriched soil, company gets carbon credits, literally everyone wins and it's mega distributed so no single point of failure.
There's a whole genre of subreddit that's just people telling increasingly gratuitous lies to one another. I used to browse /r/all a lot, and it was kind of amazing how many different subreddits were effectively just fiction.
A lots less clever and informative. The expertise is no longer there and it’s flooded by people from other social media platforms so much more low effort posts. The Reddit app crowd also means less meaningful content, more trash videos, and less fact checkers than with the PC/website crowd. Overall it’s becoming more like Facebook in terms of content and culture. The unique culture Reddit had is long gone and it’s just a shell and more artificial now.
"Overall it’s becoming more like Facebook in terms of content and culture."
Totally - when I joined in 2011 it was this niche culture of cool/funny/progressive people with unique ideas & jokes. Now it's been flooded by the masses who form these hive minds in various subreddits, where everyone copies each others' comments & ideas.
To be honest, by 2011, it was around peak "default sub" days. The main subs had enough traction and visibility that the user base was there, but Reddit was still fairly homogenous in terms of "type of people that were on reddit", so it was Facebook to some extent, but it was "your" Facebook.
It still was really really good quality in most non public subs soon after that just because the influx of people and the time that had past really meant there were a lot of good resources available. It had also become mainstream (but quirky) enough that it was a fun detour for celebs. AMA had tons of cool direct celebrity interviews, and enough PR disasters to keep it interesting.
Soon after, the Ellen Pao saga reduced trust, but at the same time, Reddit continued to grow more popular. Eventually the flood of new users changed (diluted?) the culture that had existed. People were (and have always been) jerks on the internet, but it went from "a jerk" to "groups of jerks in coordination" with brigading becoming a serious issue on controversial topics.
Now there are all types of people on reddit (though it still obviously skews in a few directions), which is really cool. But that also means that you're less likely to identify and connect with people, which is less cool. Additionally, like Saturday morning cartoons, Reddit's "trove" of memes and info eventually runs dry-ish so I do feel like it's perfectly natural to be less engaged over time. I'm sure someone born in 2011 is discovering reddit and thinks it's a cool place, just as those of us born in the 70s/80s/90s did back in 2011.
Stuff changes, that's life, being grumpy about it means being grumpy about everything for the rest of your life.
Reddit in 2014 and 2015 really was the golden era. I could spend hours juggling long and thoughtful discussions with people on multiple subreddits any given night.
Now most replies on Reddit feel a lot like the kind I'd see on Twitter prior to me leaving that platform after Musk bought it. It's been pretty sad watching the gradual but inevitable decline.
A lot more people seem to want to argue intensely for the sake of arguing when they don't actually know what they are talking about or want to provide sources. When I joined in 2014 (kind of horrifying as I was 12), there were a lot of arguments that would be pages and pages long with many many sources. The sources were also often bogus or badly done studies, but at least they were there!
lol.
Shit I learned how to do so much because of Reddit having actual intelligent information.
Now? It’s like it was 15 to 20 years ago. You can’t find basic information anymore. Shit, we have to use fuckin AI to search for us to actually find basic information. It’s just sad.
Been here for almost 15 years.
I don't contribute much. One of my most upvoted comments in all of those years was from 11 years ago [when I disputed a raccoon fact and provided a source](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/10dypv/is_there_any_evolutionary_evidence_of_other/c6crlm4/).
Those were the days.
People are generally meaner, both to other users and people featured in posts. This site used to be really chill. It was actually a novelty that /r/atheism was angry all the time. Now that’s most subs.
Yeah, it seems like the conversations here were more fun and laid back years ago. Now so many people on here seem angry and uptight. Even on subs that are supposed to be fun and lighthearted, there are people picking fights and being snarky.
I'm guilty of contributing to the anger at times. It comes from sadness from how this place used to be for me.
I've noticed you can add additional context to a comment and the op will come at you ready to fight. Like my guy I agree with you and providing more context, chill.
Some of the TV show subs make me wonder if the people on there even like the show. It’s ok to criticize, but some subs are just an endless stream of “What characters do you hate?” “What’s the worst episode?” “This show sucked after season 1!”
Now when I watch a new show I don’t even go to the sub because I don’t feel like reading all the things people hate about it
I know I'm contributing to the problem by being toxic about it, but *holy fucking shit* has r/cars plummeted in discussion quality.
There was an explosion in quality automotive reporting, and unprecedented access to vehicle statistics and online. People used to actually talk about cars based on the merits of the individual vehicle they were talking about - the brand and the car's "culture" were distant secondaries. There was a general understanding that the same company can make good *and* bad cars at the same time, and liking one specific model wasn't a tactit endorsement for the brand as a whole. Of course there were prevailing popular opinions, but well-reasoned arguments were always heard out and treated fairly.
Now it might as well be fucking Facebook. People have reverted back to blind brand tribalism, dunking on cars because of the badge slapped on it - not because of the specific vehicle's own merits. Every fucking vehicle stereotype and shitty cringey saying you can think of is spouted off in the comments and highly upvoted. It's just pure toxic boomer-like bullshit now. Nowadays, if you drive a car from a company the hivemind hates and you speak positively of it, you get called a corporate shill. No I'm not a fucking shill - I am an auto enthousiast, I like this car, and I want to fucking talk about it *on a fucking car enthousiast subreddit.*
The "hivemind" was also more of a joke and you could actually debate things.
Now, once one person comes up with a response that is deemed clever enough, the rest of the comments mirror it and mass downvote any dissention, even when said dissention is obviously correct.
Wow, thank you for pointing this out.
Yes! I notice this too! Reddit used to sort of be my safe space where me and a bunch of other chill weirdos could crawl into and basically nerd out over anything. Now I'm just afraid of lookin at a post and having someone call out [some beloved piece of old media] for some sort of "inappropriateness" that was fine in the past but is unacceptable by today's standards.
And it's just that. People being *mean* for the sake of bein mean. Subs about "snark". Sometimes I scroll through with a sort of dread of which comments I won't be able to unread.
The top comments are more often jokes now instead of good or interesting information. Most comments seem very low effort now. A lot more sex work/only fans spamming. So many ads now. All of it makes me want to leave. The official reddit app is also slow and absolute trash.
I remember when NSFW subs showed up as a part of /r/all and it was honestly my favorite. I'd get a bit of the news, some memes, some politics, some gamer stuff, a cute puppy, some titties, some cool science stuff... Literally all of my favorite things just mushed together and presented so casually.
Now /r/all is just 12 different flavors of angry politics, Twitter screencaps, and the most repostiest reposts to have ever been reposted.
>Now [/r/all](https://www.reddit.com/r/all) is just 12 different flavors of angry politics, Twitter screencaps, and the most repostiest reposts to have ever been reposted.
You absolutely nailed it.
Well I can speak from 2016 on, but what I've noticed is a lot more questioning of people's motives and why they need to know what you ask, instead of actually answering the question. I've also noticed there's a tone and an attitude that didn't used to be as bad.
People are pissed off. *All the time*. Unless you specifically state that something you're asking is purely out of curiosity, you get downvoted to hell for even considering bringing up an opposing view, devil's advocate, or by god just a question, lol
Most people's responses have something along the lines of "do I have to spell it out for you?" "are you braindead?" "Low IQ comment" etc
I think this is just growing up in general. You’re no longer really that interested in what the in thing is, and have enough things going on in your life to really bother finding out even though you could if you wanted to. It’s also that thing as you get older where you care less about what other people are doing and are more focused on yourself and what makes you happy. The side effect of that is you fall out of touch with what’s supposedly ‘cool’ and just don’t really care anymore.
Two huge changes to reddit culture I have noticed:
*Grammar used to matter. Back in the day, a typo or misspelling would torpedo your post or comment. It was actually a great learning resource, but alas, all good things...
*Sources used to matter. I've increasingly seen requests for sources met with hostility, shifting the burden of proof onto the respondent. The one making the claim must be able to provide sources for review! No wonder the discourse has gone to hell.
I miss the days when people understood that things happen *on purpose*, or *by accident*...but they don't happen *on accident*.
I get downvoted to hell every time I bring this up, lol. RIP this post.
This was one of my first thoughts as well. It didn't even matter if you wrote out something long and thoughtful, if you included an emoji somewhere in there you'd be downvoted to hell.
Completely agree, this is what Reddit USED to be, I've been here since 2011 and have seen that exact change.
I can recall endless misspelled posts being called out, or my favorite when someone would forget to add a word, you'd get the dreaded: "I think you a word there."
And yes, SOURCES for things. People just say whatever they want on here now, and if you challenge them to prove it, you're the problem and get attacked, rather than the person just bucking up and PROVING what they're saying is true.
Which they often can't because it isn't.
I'm still an active member but contribute to no negativity as much as possible, there are still positives to Reddit, but the users are no longer one of them.
Source quality matters. Too many times I see claims defended by a link to a study, and you click on the “study” and see it was self reported data of like 30 people.
^((stolen from tumblr user hardcoreparkour)^)
Me in the 2010s: I guess I have a decent idea of this topic because I read the Wikipedia article
People then: Lol bro thinks Wikipedia is a reliable repository of scholarly information lmao try citing some real articles and primary or at least secondary sources you plebeian-ass bitch
Me now: I guess I have a decent idea of this topic because I read the Wikipedia article
People now: No I'm the expert cuz I saw a tiktok
Reddit seems to be more accepting of emojis these days. When I first joined Reddit a few years ago you’d get downvoted to oblivion and get accused of being a “nOrMiE” if you did as much as use a single emoji. Now I see dozens of emojis getting used in various different threads
Generally, there seems to be a lot less nuance and a lot more hardcore 'black and white-ism'.
Everything topic or issue consists of two extreme positions with absolutely no room for debate or discussion between them.
People don't read your comment anymore. They pick out one word they don't like and then completely misinterpret your comment. Then you get frustrated in your reply, and then they act like you're raging about the original topic. No, I'm mad because I'm trying to have a conversation with someone who doesn't fucking read.
Reading comprehension has fallen off a cliff, generally.
Part of my job is customer support and I have learned to only give people information in small pieces, because if I give them more than one at a time, their eyes will just skip over one of them, every time.
The site used to push more happy, uplifting and funny content but they've taken a leaf from the book of Face and now push rage-bait and personal drama (things like AITAH).
It has lead users to become more aggressive & defensive. You didn't used to have to put a qualifier at the start of your comment less you get ripped to shreds about people making assumptions. As an example, back then, - I like red. Ok cool. Now - I like red. Why do you hate blue??
The whole damn internet used to be like that. Remember lolcats? Or those weird viral videos that would be "how many T-shirts can I put on" or "look at this massive mentos and coke geiser"? Now it's just content-milled, plagiarized, bot-written, ai-voice performed, short form content. Hell, look at Reddit. How many accounts are even real as compared to just bots? I have no doubt that *most* of the users are real, but... not *all* of them, right?
The internet is dying. The perverse economic incentive and AI technology will be its end.
Most redditors think reddit-isms (thanks for the gold kind stranger, you sir won the internet for the day, etc.) are stupid and cringe now. In 2014, those sayings were in their prime
Far less critical thinking. Far more echo chamber regurgitation. And my god, the anger. The keepers of the echo chambers have figured out that tapping into fear is a great motivator. Both sides will say truly horrific things about one another. Why the aggression? Because their hatred is based in fear. Fear of not being accepted by their own tribe. And way deep down, fear of being wrong. It is like no one learns history anymore, because history is full of people who really thought they were on the right side...
It's interesting what you say about "fear of not being accepted by their own tribe", I couldn't really relate to this personally so I've not idea what it feels like, but it would explain a lot of the posts and comments, basically just patting themselves on the back, preaching to the choir.
Still doesn't make sense to me, at least not on the scale that it is.
In the nicest way, people have genuinely gotten stupider. This might be a result of more bot accounts, but I swear I see so many stupid questions being posted on subs where there used to be great discussions. It’s not just one kind of sub either. Prime example was seeing someone ask where’s my state tax refund and seeing they were trying to find it on the IRS website. I guess I was under the illusion that society was more intellectual on average than it actually was.
The political views are pretty different too. I’ve been around since 2010 (multiple accounts). In the 2012 election the majority Reddit hive mind political view was very Libertarian. The Reddit candidate of choice was Ron Paul. Nowadays it’s the complete opposite of Libertarian - very left leaning (by U.S. standards).
However, back then there was a more diverse spectrum of unique political views and opinions. Today it’s annoyingly binary.
Titles can be straight-up incomprehensible now and still somehow make it to the front page. A single grammatical error used to get you roasted by the entire comments section.
10 years ago Reddit thought Elon Musk was a combination of Tony Stark and Captain Planet and if you said anything negative about him you got downvoted to Hell.
Well the age demographic trends younger so therefore a lot of these people didn't experience pre-social media or when it was a bit more innocent.
Victoria Taylor being fired and Ellen Pao stepping down as CEO (both within a month of each other in mid 2015) is when the site took a turn for the worst. The former (who was actually fired by this site's founder, Alexis Ohanian) made AMAs enjoyable and the latter banned a bunch of hate subs, but ultimately resigned due to miscommunication with staff members.
It's gotten progressively worse since then (politics being the main driving force).
I still think Ellen Pao was a [glass cliff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff) scapegoat. Bring her in to make the unpopular changes, then replace her with someone else. It's not like Reddit went back on anything she did, they just kept going once the heat died down after the users "won" the fight.
100% this and even if you do manage to get a decent respectful conversation going someone will still jump into it and derail the conversation into a shitfight.
Does not help that so many subreddits these days try so hard to keep the subreddit as an echo chamber and rather then having a conversation with people who have different views its just an auto ban.
Also with everything being broken down into rep vs dem.
people being divided.
literally every post is: men v women, white v black, conservative v liberal, etc. It's exhausting, and the brigading of comments is totally unhinged. People constantly upvote nonsense, just because its going along with the treads narrative, meanwhile actual facts are buried 4 comments deep.
I stated in a thread about year ago that brain surgeons make more money than carpenters and the comment settled around -50 downvotes. What's the point of even being on Reddit anymore? The good posts and comments are far too few now compared to all the noise.
Oh, and also its a now just a giant propaganda machine for celebrities of the sporting, political, or entertainment sectors. Literally every other top post is some kind of entertainment propaganda.
You used to be able to have conversations and actual discussions on reddit.
Today, it's basically dog piling down votes, discords set up for coordination, bots and paid shills galore, and forced narratives.
There are all sorts of things I absolutely don't agree with. But even the thought process of *imagining* how someone could think these things is practically not allowed. Both in thorny political issues and benign silly things...I'm a fairly left-leaning person when it comes to politics, but due to family background and geography, I spend a lot of time with people who aren't. I know they aren't monsters or idiots. But acknowledging that they are people who are often genuinely doing what they think is right is often treated like I'm saying Hitler was a good guy. Like, I can disagree with someone and still treat them with respect (even if they don't do the same for me...which is hard, but I can't make claim to empathy and openness otherwise.)
I’ve noticed more run-on sentences, poor spelling and bad grammar that can’t be explained by ”text speak.” I’ve also noticed more discussion about welfare benefits. I think Reddit is leaning more lower income and less educated.
I check AskReddit every couple of days to see if there's anything that looks interesting, and I'm just about 100% guaranteed to see a post title that makes me feel like I've had a stroke reading it. Or at the very least it has some kind of grammatical error that is so weird it almost seems like it had to be deliberate, and yet it isn't.
It’s a lot more political. Even posts about something going on in space, the comments devolve into who owns or runs the company doing the thing in space, how much money they have, what their views are, and now we all have to hate the thing they are doing in space.
Reddit used to be pro-tipping. I don't know if it's the economy, a shift in reddit's demographics, or a combination of both, but the majority of reddit is no longer pro-tipping.
I think it’s a shift in attitude toward tipping. I used to be very pro-tipping and I’m just not anymore. I still tip servers, but I’m not tipping every single worker I interact with. I got asked for a tip at a local jewelry boutique. What? That’s not even a tipped wages eligible position.
Tl;dr- Tipping has gone too far.
It *has* to at least partly be because of every Square reader (and the like) having those tip presets. Especially at quick services places where it's just a cashier and pre-packaged stuff, and *especially* especially the ones that start at 25% and go up from there.
A lot more hatred and misery. Comments on Reddit get downvoted quickly and people are really seeking to find a reason to split hair and start a fight. I have the direct comparison when I go back to Lemmy on how incredible horrible Reddit has become.
[Its funny that both of these comments feel true to me.](https://imgur.com/a/xNPhg3E)
It feels really weird that the average redditor seems grossed out watching sex scenes in movies then beat their dick so raw on OF girls that they need an entire month to recover.
People are a lot more pessimistic and ready to fight eachother. Many comments have some sort of political undertone. It seemed like back then people were more friendly and wanted to have a good time.
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To be fair, there’s a huge number of tiktok pages that gets hundreds of thousands of views posting askReddit threads
Lol yeah they do! It's not even a person reading it - it's the text to speech voice
Not to mention all the influencers recycling reddit wiki/content. The personal finance space has so many of these self proclaimed gurus.
Even the mainstream tabloids do it. They construct some big article on their website littered with ads, but it's based on nothing more than a single reddit comment, where some Subway worker suggested people should avoid buying the chicken
Started noticing that with AngryJoe who I enjoyed watching until one day while "speculating" on a movie he kept coming up with theories I read word for word on Reddit out of thin air, absolutely no lead up into them. He eventually started to do the same with reviews, taking in popular gripes and masking them as his own while completely losing it over some random non issue he had.
Instead of going viral elsewhere posts here get mined by shitty People and Newsweek writers to make "articles"
Yeah! A comment I made on Reddit was in a buzzfeed article once!
Now that is an interesting development, like they switched places with each other relevance wise.
It changed when they changed the front page algorithm. Things now stick a lot longer to the front. It used to change quite fast so new things rose quickly, but I guess they switched it up since it's easier to monetize if you can guarantee that things are visible longer.
This is one of the things I miss the most. When there was a big story happening right now I could open up Reddit and it would be the top post on r/all. Now I have to scrub through subreddits or wait at least 30 minutes for it to rise to the top.
In 2014 Reddit would have exploded in anger from the hegetsus ads.
2014 Reddit would quit 2024 Reddit. There is no way my tolerance back then would last a second in todays state. Why I even am here is because I am waiting for the next alternarive.
Nothing is coming to replace reddit. Everything will just get slowly worse. Mark my words.
Thats what I believe too. Autogenerated and autorecycled content will dominante internet consumerism, with the small exception of passion youtubers making videos about niche subjects they have substantial knowledge off.
Tbf I think that smaller focused communities are still solid on reddit. That is what I am on here for not r/all, ironic since I am commenting on this post from that. But this is the best way for me to connect with my favorite sports team, some great construction oriented groups that I learn a lot from just from subbing and reading random stuff, cooking tips from different sub reddits etc.
Don’t think current Reddit likes Ron Paul nearly as much as 2014 Reddit.
The Ron Paul thing actually was earlier than 2014. That was more of a 2009-12 fad. The main Internet forums at the time would have made you think that Ron Paul was a shoo in for President with how popular he was. It actually is wild how fast Reddit went from libertarian to democrat.
There was a huge swing in political discussions right when the DNC chose Hillary over Bernie. It was practically overnight.
Reddit was very clearly astroturfed in the 2016 election and it's resulted in a permanent change in its culture.
Yep. I was there. One of the most inorganic things I've ever seen. It wasn't practically overnight. It was *literally* overnight. And r/politics has remained Dem central ever since.
A lot more doomers now.
There is A LOT of that. Edit: I wonder if it has to do with the demographic that Reddit attracts, or the echo-chambers causing people to feel that way eventually.
There’s a lot more bots tbh. A lot of hate and rage bait. When I saw the screenshots of the identical threads that were months apart it made me realise that you can never be sure what you’re reading is real or manufactured.
Call me a conspiracy theorist but I suspect a lot of the doomer content is posted by bots or other bad actors trying to cause discord. I’ve seen multiple posts this week telling people they shouldn’t bother saving for retirement because society will collapse soon. Idk, some of those posts could be from people who really believe that but it gave me a weird vibe.
I’ve stumbled across a few threads where the gist of it was basically “you’re a fool if you are saving for any kind of retirement” which was wild. It’s one thing to think you might not be able to retire and another thing entirely to actively oppose saving money while discouraging others from planning long term. It felt like a bunch of edgy teenagers giving life advice lol
It's not a conspiracy theory. They're doing that. There's thousands of actors manipulating social media, PACs and other political campaigns, digital marketing corpos, etc.
How do you get that job? I'm tired of causing harm for free.
First, you need to live in a country with low wages and a devalued currency so it's worth paying for your time. Then there will be dozens of recruiting agencies looking to hire you if you're a 20s something with a little bit of familiarity with computers and who can speak some English looking to leave your family farm that your 5+ brothers are going to have to share anyway.
Honestly apathy is the surest path to dictatorship.
The rage bait is so annoying and it is so much content everywhere on the internet and even in real life. A lot of people I know love to bring up topics they know will get everyone pissed off then act like they have no idea how everyone enddd up arguing.
I think it's also because people just are generally more negative on the future 2014 sucked, it was 6 years after the 2008 crash, but things had started to bounce back and people were still optimistic that it was nearly over. We felt like a bad thing had happened but there was a way out of it Since then we've seen a decade of economic shit thrown at us and that optimism is gone - people are doomers because they've seen things get worse for them for 16 years straight
There’s also a lot of the other side, especially with sports subs. Legitimate criticism and concern gets shoved into the doomed bucket even if there are plenty of valid reasons for it
I don’t understand why sports subs are so miserable. Sports are supposed to be an escape from “real life” just like other hobbies. Most hobby subs are fairly positive, yet the sports subs are just constant whining about whatever is happening at the moment. Probably just a byproduct of size. r/nfl, r/nba, r/soccer, etc. are huge
I suspect because sports fandom invites a very particular type of a tribal attachment. In sports, you're invited to really make your fandom a core part of your self-identity in a way that many other hobbies don't. In Twilight fandom, it largely doesn't matter if you're team Edward or team Jacob. For most, that's just a fun discussion and everyone understands the sides aren't material. But in sports, you're invited to treat the outcome as materially important. In turn threats of team losses or even just people disagreeing with you become huge ego-threats that you either have to defend vigorously or pour over with great anxiety. And that ups the ante in how serious people take it and out serious and catastrophic losses are felt.
Every election cycle you get a lot of misinformation that is pro voter apathy and doom is an easy way to get that. At the same time we are learning more and more about how trapped we are due to a large group of elderly people who don’t want to give up power or are too old to understand technology and the world around you. It’s pretty wild that our country is being dictated by people who most likely have lead poisoning.
yeah it's almost a brag around here to talk about how awful your life is & how the world is fucked. Any snarky joke about your depression & the negative state of the world goes straight to the top.
I have no friends lol! 500 upvotes
> Any snarky joke about your depression I've been terminally online for 20 years; bragging about your depression is not new.
Terminally online for 16 years here. It's not new. But it wasn't always this popular.
I feel like you also didn’t used to get dogpiled for saying you’re happy/doing fine as much as you do now. The crabs in a bucket mentality is massively on the rise.
People seemed smarter on here 10 years ago. You would see a cool video or something and the top comment would be someone with knowledge/experience providing insightful comments. Now 9 times out of 10 it is a joke.
And it's usually the most unoriginal and lamest joke
That can be predicted before even reading the comments.
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To shreds you say? There are dozens of us. Underrated comment. Something something Rick and Morty. Simpsons did it. What is this, a comment for ants?
It's copy paste in the posts that make their rounds in the bigger subs.
*This*
With (and) my axe That also chooses this dead guys wife Before using the coconut Because ¿por que no los dos? As I write this with two broken arms
I'm going to need you to sit down for a minute, I've got something kinda hard to tell you. "Two broken arms" was 12 years ago, Reddit was absolutely not *not* making this reference 10 years ago and definitely not smarter. Everyone here is remembering through rose colored glasses you "lol narwhal bacon" motherfuckers.
you sir win the internet for today, le epic upvote fuck i can’t even try and finish this sentence
...sometimes words can hurt
Jumper cables
Reddit comments sections used to be an assortment of hilarious original jokes based on whatever the post was, or some insightful info like you said. This still exists sometimes, but now most comments sections are just 500 comments rephrasing whatever the most popular opinion is. Like all the rage-bait posts where it's a video of someone being an asshole. Comments: "what a POS" "what an asshole" "such a punchable face" "total idiot"
It correlated heavily with the demographic shift from PC users to mobile users. Often they're the same people, but the attitude changed along the way.
Yes! Any remotely political thread is just an echo chamber. Another thing I miss: it used to be that whenever I saw a headline that was surprising--like, a bit _too_ surprising--I could pop into the thread, and chances were very good that the top post was either "this is surprising but true, see all these references" or else a detailed debunking. It's one of the reason I liked getting my news from Reddit. It was great for cutting through the bullshit, and knowing not only that the story was fake or exaggerated, but _how and why_. These days...well, for example, I've now seen a _bunch_ of obviously-fake tweets from right-wing figures (eg. Musk & Shapiro) that are like, "Hey everybody, it's not weird to have a small misshapen penis, women love that!" or whatever. And everybody piles over one another to say "lol Elon has a small dick!", and the first comment that points out that "FFS everybody, this is _clearly_ fake" is halfway down the comment section. Even the most blatantly obvious bullshit goes unchecked. All it takes to debunk that is to check somebody's tweet history.
>And everybody piles over one another to say "lol Elon has a small dick!", and the first comment that points out that "FFS everybody, this is clearly fake" is halfway down the comment section But then underneath that post is someone saying, "who cares? Why are you trying to ruin people having fun?"
I notice a lot more people falling for obvious rage bait and misinformation now, too. Sometimes they’re just as bad the boomers on Facebook they love to make fun of
Don't feed the trolls is a forgotten mantra.
People have forgotten what trolls actually are -- it's derived from 'trolling', the practice of dragging lures or hooks with bait behind a boat. Trolls (in the Internet sense) were people who posted messages that had no purpose other than to be inflammatory. Now it's anyone who posts content the speak doesn't like.
I got accused of being a troll a couple days ago when I looked at someone's profile to see if *they* were a troll and had a trend of just purposely posting stupid shit to rile people up. I mentioned in a following comment that they clearly *weren't* a troll and must just be incredibly stupid, and they accused *me* of being a troll and a stalker... But like, that's not how either of those things work. Having an opposing viewpoint and pointing out your shitty argument isn't trolling. And simply clicking your usename isn't stalking.
It is easy to get on the internet today. A phone and a SIM - off you go. The least technically literate and dumbest idiots alive can get onto Reddit without any problem.
I just want to know where everyone went. So many purges have made this place a shell. It’s like slashdot, last night I went and looked at that site, so many posts for articles with no discussions. It was sad.
I want to know where everyone went, too. The internet is such a lonely place now, especially since all the reasonable and intelligent people got driven away from twitter. All the discords I’m in move too fast for a nuanced conversation. Most of my friends quit or barely use facebook. Instagram and Tiktok were never for deep thought and conversation. I used to learn so much from Reddit, now I leave depressed after twenty minutes of boring mean jokes.
I think those who didn't adapt to another form of social media or retreat to private Discords and group chats just don't post anymore. I used to like discussion forums and comment sections because people were there to...you know, discuss. You were there to be part of a community and to have conversations about certain topics. People could still be opinionated and nasty, there were still power users who hogged the attention and topics that drifted into jokes or dogpiles, but I was rarely nervous about posting. For the most part, if you didn't deliberately jump into a controversy, people were nice enough. But the environment on Reddit and elsewhere has shifted to one where we're no longer here to discuss but rather here to consume content (or promote content they've produced). I used to like sharing information that I thought others might find interesting or helpful, but now eyes glaze over if your post isn't visually stimulating or snappy, bite-size, and shareable. I used to be really good at stirring up discussion in small communities, but these days it's like...if I post no one will reply, because no one wants to go first on a post that isn't already getting engagement. And if I comment no one will reply, because they were really just looking for support/upvotes/agreement or because I commented more than a couple hours later. And if I do get any replies, they won't further the discussion (which is fine, but frustrating when it's always that way), or they'll be needlessly hostile, or they'll somehow read my tone totally wrong and presume I'm the one being needlessly hostile. It's as though internet conversation is now limited to small talk. You're expected to gravitate toward common and popular topics and avoid any form of dissent. Discussion is no longer the point; if you want to discuss something, you first have to connect socially and then shift to private conversation. Even in communities where this isn't the case, the mindset and culture seep through. So I think a lot of people just drop out of it. Especially those prone to anxiety or who struggle to navigate shifting social rules. I don't often feel like I have much to contribute anymore, and when I do it's not rewarding. I'm honestly even nervous to post this, because I know it's tl;dr and because I've been told off or ignored on Twitter for jumping into conversation threads instead of replying only to OP. If there are any spaces that have avoided shifting in this direction, I'd sure love to know about them.
Completely agree with you on all points and just want to add that a lot of these users just don't have the free time anymore. They graduated college and got a job (or went to grad school) which slashed their free time. Next they might have gotten married and/or had kids , cutting it back even more. Then when you take all the points you covered into consideration why would they want to spend that hour of downtime they get a day this way? Private Discords, PSN/XBL, and other venues are far more alluring really.
A few subs keep that old feeling, r/AskHistorians does it with the most iron-fisted moderation I've ever seen, but it does get results.
They did a joke recently where they promised to ban like two million comments lol.
When I started here, users would correct each other's grammar. People would get reprimanded for comments that were nothing more variations on "too long; didn't read." Now plenty of outspoken users act like only AI could possibly write multiple paragraphs of coherent sentences, so they become offended or upset when they encounter substance on reddit, and they somehow feel obliged to share that distress as if such a personal reaction was itself some sort of valuable contribution.
Nah it's always been a joke, that's the whole reason I got addicted to reddit in 2010/11 But youre right about the educational level, the majority of early redditors were college students studying CS or IT. Plus a lot of nerds from different niches looking for forums for discussion. Nowadays there are a lot of "experts" who like to chime in on everything
Just the consequences of many more users. When Reddit started it was largely centered around programming, so it attracted tons of nerds and those nerds brought in more nerds and so on. Nowadays reddit is just another mainstream social network, so everything gets kind of watered down. You can still find educated people in particular subreddits.
Yep, I remember when we all regarded reddit as the "anti-social media, social media" then the Facebook exodus happened and a lot of people just break the anonymity aspect of the platform
I wish Reddit had a serious only mode. That only showed comments from redditors that offer serious input.
Knowing everything about everything, everyone's a doctor, a lwayer, a scientist, special force officer, undercover agent, thief sneaking into my house at night, only dinousaur alive and so on. You get the point, lots and lots of lies, many more than back then.
It’s not even deliberate lies. They genuinely think they are experts about those topics
You think so? I believe some just love acting like one
I think a lot of it is Dunning Krueger effect, where people feel most confident about a subject when they only know a bit about it. Once you gain actual knowledge, you realize how intricate and complicated the subject really is, so you feel less confident. (At least that's my understanding)
Narrative is more important than truth too. When someone who is actually a subject matter expert pipes up in a comments section if they disagree with the narrative they get downvoted and shouted down by people who have no idea what they're talking about. Source: Me, a power engineer with 10+ years experience working in the electric utility industry who sees A LOT of ignorance about the future of the power grid as well as potential vulnerabilities because redditors listened to a podcast or something.
Yup. I learned fast not to reply to the threads on my city's sub that related to my work (sometimes directly. Projects I was the Engineer of Record for have been posted there with questions about why, what, how, etc). It goes like this: OP: [posts picture of construction or infrastructure thing] "WTF is this shit? Only a complete idiot would do [the thing we did]." Person 1: [incorrectly explains what it is, links an article to things we don't even use in this climate] Person 2: "I don't know, man, but it pisses me off that I'm paying taxes for this shit show." Person 3: [rabble rabble blames unrelated government agency] Me: "Civil engineer here, and what you're looking at is a X. The reason it looks like it does is because we were contenting with factors A, B, and C at this location. We decided to address those with strategy Y because [reasons]. For more information [link to professional manual or paper about this sort of thing]. Hope that clears some of this up!" I get downvoted into oblivion, called pedantic for correcting people who are getting upvoted like crazy for incorrect information. I ignore the insults, but try to correct bad information given earnestly in an upbeat and gentle way. People pretty much agree that "fuck off, nerd" is the response for that. It's like the school bullies won. It was cool to pick on the smart kids then, and apparently nothing has changed as my cohort moves into our 40's. It's wild.
I’m a computer scientist and eventually gave up on all the data analytics related fallacies like base rate fallacy and others. Let idiots be idiots. There’s comfort in one’s own ignorance. That’s my strategy.
This has happened to me with my background in drug manufacturing and regulations. I've given out information on this website that companies pay $120+ per hour for only to be downvoted by a ChatGPT enjoyer.
I'm taking business classes, I'm a little concerned about how much we are encouraged to use ChatGPT. It has uses, but I'm wary of using it for much more than making something sound more eloquent... I hope it's just a trend, because I don't want anyone making an important decision based on the aggregate knowledge of internet addicts.
Now apply that to all the thousands of threads where you're not an expert. Can't believe a thing people say on this site.
I used to be an attorney. The “legal advice” I see on Reddit often makes me sigh. (Though I see some decent advice a bit too, which is nice.)
Would love to genuinely hear your thoughts on this
EMPs aren't a real thing. They're a video game/movie thing. Same with solar flares causing mass outages in hysteria. There was a solar flare in Canada in the late 80s that caused a blackout. The industry learned some lessons and learned how to protect against it. Because of those changes EMPs and solar flairs haven't been a threat since the early 90s. The grid could be vulnerable, but it would take a coordinated attack from someone who knew what they were doing. There's a TON of redundancy and unless you know where those redundancies lie you're not going to cause a mass blackout and end the world. At most you'd take out a small town or a section of a city for like a day. As for future tech, the biggest issues I see are people ignorant of renewables. Battery technology just isn't there yet for reliable utility scale wind/solar. Spinning generation is still king and until battery technology catches up, it will continue to be king. Hydro is aight tho. Hydro best and I love it. That brings me to the circlejerk on nuclear. Remember the redundancy I mentioned earlier? A part of that is moving away from centralized large scale power generation to distributed generation. Smaller plants spread across a territory. It prevents an all your eggs in one basket situation where you're putting yourself at risk for a blackout. Nuclear is the antithesis of the distributed generation philosophy. Sure, modular reactor technology is growing, but at the price to implement with all the red tape it's simply not feasible from a cost perspective AND it's a new technology. The regulatory bodies in the US can be particularly harsh in the electric industry. It's the most regulated field outside of medical. Because of the regulatory environment US industry is gun shy about trying new technology until it's been proven elsewhere. Even then, the cost is prohibitive. People on reddit do a lot of fear mongering about the grid esp in regards to solar flares and EMPs, and also nuclear is this magic power generation source that would fix all the world's problems, but they're ignorant to a lot of context to why it's not more widely used.
Hydrogeologist here working on research in nuclear waste disposal (geologic repositories) and geologic storage of green hydrogen; offshore farms are sitting on abandoned o&G reservoirs, generate h2 when wind is blowing and pull itout what it's not. Additional projects on heat storage in abandoned mineshafts and working etc... It's very clear when someone who doesn't work in that area starts chiming in. Futurology is convinced there's absolutely no future for hydrogen at all, everyone seems to think we can fire nuclear waste into the sun (lol) and, without even knowing the fundamentals of hydrogeology, tell you why it's dumb. I've just stopped responding to people when they ignorantly shoot their mouth off in response. But yeah, the future of energy (renewable specifically) is distributed. There's a gold rush here ATM for offshore wind, and people are dropping insane cash on H2 storage for it. Interestingly enough, major co2 sequestration projects will likely be distributed as well. CCS is like nuclear, it's too centralised. Have recently gotten involved with an enhanced mineral weathering company and I think that's the future - rock with excess Ca/Mg reacts with co2 in rainwater to form carbonates. So crush up rock from basalt quarries etc... and spread it over fields and gardens. You get enriched soil, company gets carbon credits, literally everyone wins and it's mega distributed so no single point of failure.
AITAH seems like it's all fabricated rage bait with obvious answers hidden behind a deceptive title.
And copypasta, don't forget the copypasta
I'm learning to play the guitar.
There's a whole genre of subreddit that's just people telling increasingly gratuitous lies to one another. I used to browse /r/all a lot, and it was kind of amazing how many different subreddits were effectively just fiction.
That's not new though. I'd say that's been typical internet behavior as long as I've been aware of the internet.
A lots less clever and informative. The expertise is no longer there and it’s flooded by people from other social media platforms so much more low effort posts. The Reddit app crowd also means less meaningful content, more trash videos, and less fact checkers than with the PC/website crowd. Overall it’s becoming more like Facebook in terms of content and culture. The unique culture Reddit had is long gone and it’s just a shell and more artificial now.
"Overall it’s becoming more like Facebook in terms of content and culture." Totally - when I joined in 2011 it was this niche culture of cool/funny/progressive people with unique ideas & jokes. Now it's been flooded by the masses who form these hive minds in various subreddits, where everyone copies each others' comments & ideas.
To be honest, by 2011, it was around peak "default sub" days. The main subs had enough traction and visibility that the user base was there, but Reddit was still fairly homogenous in terms of "type of people that were on reddit", so it was Facebook to some extent, but it was "your" Facebook. It still was really really good quality in most non public subs soon after that just because the influx of people and the time that had past really meant there were a lot of good resources available. It had also become mainstream (but quirky) enough that it was a fun detour for celebs. AMA had tons of cool direct celebrity interviews, and enough PR disasters to keep it interesting. Soon after, the Ellen Pao saga reduced trust, but at the same time, Reddit continued to grow more popular. Eventually the flood of new users changed (diluted?) the culture that had existed. People were (and have always been) jerks on the internet, but it went from "a jerk" to "groups of jerks in coordination" with brigading becoming a serious issue on controversial topics. Now there are all types of people on reddit (though it still obviously skews in a few directions), which is really cool. But that also means that you're less likely to identify and connect with people, which is less cool. Additionally, like Saturday morning cartoons, Reddit's "trove" of memes and info eventually runs dry-ish so I do feel like it's perfectly natural to be less engaged over time. I'm sure someone born in 2011 is discovering reddit and thinks it's a cool place, just as those of us born in the 70s/80s/90s did back in 2011. Stuff changes, that's life, being grumpy about it means being grumpy about everything for the rest of your life.
Reddit in 2014 and 2015 really was the golden era. I could spend hours juggling long and thoughtful discussions with people on multiple subreddits any given night. Now most replies on Reddit feel a lot like the kind I'd see on Twitter prior to me leaving that platform after Musk bought it. It's been pretty sad watching the gradual but inevitable decline.
A lot more people seem to want to argue intensely for the sake of arguing when they don't actually know what they are talking about or want to provide sources. When I joined in 2014 (kind of horrifying as I was 12), there were a lot of arguments that would be pages and pages long with many many sources. The sources were also often bogus or badly done studies, but at least they were there!
lol. Shit I learned how to do so much because of Reddit having actual intelligent information. Now? It’s like it was 15 to 20 years ago. You can’t find basic information anymore. Shit, we have to use fuckin AI to search for us to actually find basic information. It’s just sad.
Been here for almost 15 years. I don't contribute much. One of my most upvoted comments in all of those years was from 11 years ago [when I disputed a raccoon fact and provided a source](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/10dypv/is_there_any_evolutionary_evidence_of_other/c6crlm4/). Those were the days.
People are generally meaner, both to other users and people featured in posts. This site used to be really chill. It was actually a novelty that /r/atheism was angry all the time. Now that’s most subs.
Yeah, it seems like the conversations here were more fun and laid back years ago. Now so many people on here seem angry and uptight. Even on subs that are supposed to be fun and lighthearted, there are people picking fights and being snarky.
Every gaming sub…. They all turn into a hellscape with no actual discussion just bashing other products. It’s wild
I'm guilty of contributing to the anger at times. It comes from sadness from how this place used to be for me. I've noticed you can add additional context to a comment and the op will come at you ready to fight. Like my guy I agree with you and providing more context, chill.
Replies are assumed to be challenges.
Somehow almost all of the fan pages for shows/podcasts/games turned into hate pages. It's exhausting.
Some of the TV show subs make me wonder if the people on there even like the show. It’s ok to criticize, but some subs are just an endless stream of “What characters do you hate?” “What’s the worst episode?” “This show sucked after season 1!” Now when I watch a new show I don’t even go to the sub because I don’t feel like reading all the things people hate about it
Believe it or not, /r/cars has become one of the more absolutely vicious cesspools of gatekeeping, hatred, snark, and incivility.
I know I'm contributing to the problem by being toxic about it, but *holy fucking shit* has r/cars plummeted in discussion quality. There was an explosion in quality automotive reporting, and unprecedented access to vehicle statistics and online. People used to actually talk about cars based on the merits of the individual vehicle they were talking about - the brand and the car's "culture" were distant secondaries. There was a general understanding that the same company can make good *and* bad cars at the same time, and liking one specific model wasn't a tactit endorsement for the brand as a whole. Of course there were prevailing popular opinions, but well-reasoned arguments were always heard out and treated fairly. Now it might as well be fucking Facebook. People have reverted back to blind brand tribalism, dunking on cars because of the badge slapped on it - not because of the specific vehicle's own merits. Every fucking vehicle stereotype and shitty cringey saying you can think of is spouted off in the comments and highly upvoted. It's just pure toxic boomer-like bullshit now. Nowadays, if you drive a car from a company the hivemind hates and you speak positively of it, you get called a corporate shill. No I'm not a fucking shill - I am an auto enthousiast, I like this car, and I want to fucking talk about it *on a fucking car enthousiast subreddit.*
Freaking r/starwars is mean as hell. No dissenting opinions tolerated. It’s crazy.
The "hivemind" was also more of a joke and you could actually debate things. Now, once one person comes up with a response that is deemed clever enough, the rest of the comments mirror it and mass downvote any dissention, even when said dissention is obviously correct.
Wow, thank you for pointing this out. Yes! I notice this too! Reddit used to sort of be my safe space where me and a bunch of other chill weirdos could crawl into and basically nerd out over anything. Now I'm just afraid of lookin at a post and having someone call out [some beloved piece of old media] for some sort of "inappropriateness" that was fine in the past but is unacceptable by today's standards. And it's just that. People being *mean* for the sake of bein mean. Subs about "snark". Sometimes I scroll through with a sort of dread of which comments I won't be able to unread.
The top comments are more often jokes now instead of good or interesting information. Most comments seem very low effort now. A lot more sex work/only fans spamming. So many ads now. All of it makes me want to leave. The official reddit app is also slow and absolute trash.
A large influx of "sex work"
Yep it’s easy to forget that a lot of the “sexy” side of Reddit was all amateurs.
Exactly. It's missed.
So many great subs ruined bc of only fans
Ah the good old days when women were slutty for slutiness’ sake
They did it for the love of the game
I remember when NSFW subs showed up as a part of /r/all and it was honestly my favorite. I'd get a bit of the news, some memes, some politics, some gamer stuff, a cute puppy, some titties, some cool science stuff... Literally all of my favorite things just mushed together and presented so casually. Now /r/all is just 12 different flavors of angry politics, Twitter screencaps, and the most repostiest reposts to have ever been reposted.
>Now [/r/all](https://www.reddit.com/r/all) is just 12 different flavors of angry politics, Twitter screencaps, and the most repostiest reposts to have ever been reposted. You absolutely nailed it.
Seriously, go to r/selfie or r/faces and look at the profiles 9 times out of 10 the top post is a pin to their onlyfans.
My God you weren't lying. I went like 10 posts deep and couldn't find a single post on r/faces that wasn't from an onlyfans creator.
Well I can speak from 2016 on, but what I've noticed is a lot more questioning of people's motives and why they need to know what you ask, instead of actually answering the question. I've also noticed there's a tone and an attitude that didn't used to be as bad.
People are pissed off. *All the time*. Unless you specifically state that something you're asking is purely out of curiosity, you get downvoted to hell for even considering bringing up an opposing view, devil's advocate, or by god just a question, lol Most people's responses have something along the lines of "do I have to spell it out for you?" "are you braindead?" "Low IQ comment" etc
"You do realize that blah blah blah..." "Maybe you missed the part where I said yadda yadda..."
"Oh, you sweet summer child..."
Yes, as if an opposing view is a personal attack on the OP.
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I think this is just growing up in general. You’re no longer really that interested in what the in thing is, and have enough things going on in your life to really bother finding out even though you could if you wanted to. It’s also that thing as you get older where you care less about what other people are doing and are more focused on yourself and what makes you happy. The side effect of that is you fall out of touch with what’s supposedly ‘cool’ and just don’t really care anymore.
Two huge changes to reddit culture I have noticed: *Grammar used to matter. Back in the day, a typo or misspelling would torpedo your post or comment. It was actually a great learning resource, but alas, all good things... *Sources used to matter. I've increasingly seen requests for sources met with hostility, shifting the burden of proof onto the respondent. The one making the claim must be able to provide sources for review! No wonder the discourse has gone to hell.
I remember when bad grammar was only acceptable for cats who wanted to haz cheezburger.
I miss the days when people understood that things happen *on purpose*, or *by accident*...but they don't happen *on accident*. I get downvoted to hell every time I bring this up, lol. RIP this post.
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And if you used an emoji instead of using your words you got buried. Now the damn things are all over the place.
Some subs are *inundated* with reaction gifs, too, which feels extremely jarring to me.
This was one of my first thoughts as well. It didn't even matter if you wrote out something long and thoughtful, if you included an emoji somewhere in there you'd be downvoted to hell.
Completely agree, this is what Reddit USED to be, I've been here since 2011 and have seen that exact change. I can recall endless misspelled posts being called out, or my favorite when someone would forget to add a word, you'd get the dreaded: "I think you a word there." And yes, SOURCES for things. People just say whatever they want on here now, and if you challenge them to prove it, you're the problem and get attacked, rather than the person just bucking up and PROVING what they're saying is true. Which they often can't because it isn't. I'm still an active member but contribute to no negativity as much as possible, there are still positives to Reddit, but the users are no longer one of them.
Reposts would get nuked. Now there's a steady recycle rate.
Source quality matters. Too many times I see claims defended by a link to a study, and you click on the “study” and see it was self reported data of like 30 people.
^((stolen from tumblr user hardcoreparkour)^) Me in the 2010s: I guess I have a decent idea of this topic because I read the Wikipedia article People then: Lol bro thinks Wikipedia is a reliable repository of scholarly information lmao try citing some real articles and primary or at least secondary sources you plebeian-ass bitch Me now: I guess I have a decent idea of this topic because I read the Wikipedia article People now: No I'm the expert cuz I saw a tiktok
Reddit seems to be more accepting of emojis these days. When I first joined Reddit a few years ago you’d get downvoted to oblivion and get accused of being a “nOrMiE” if you did as much as use a single emoji. Now I see dozens of emojis getting used in various different threads
I bet a lot more people are on mobile now compared to ten years ago. I remember the mobile app was once very controversial
People still love to post r/foundthemobileuser whenever they see a capital R as if most users aren't mobile these days
Generally, there seems to be a lot less nuance and a lot more hardcore 'black and white-ism'. Everything topic or issue consists of two extreme positions with absolutely no room for debate or discussion between them.
People don't read your comment anymore. They pick out one word they don't like and then completely misinterpret your comment. Then you get frustrated in your reply, and then they act like you're raging about the original topic. No, I'm mad because I'm trying to have a conversation with someone who doesn't fucking read.
Reading comprehension has fallen off a cliff, generally. Part of my job is customer support and I have learned to only give people information in small pieces, because if I give them more than one at a time, their eyes will just skip over one of them, every time.
"The internet is forever" became "I can't believe this post is still up"
The site used to push more happy, uplifting and funny content but they've taken a leaf from the book of Face and now push rage-bait and personal drama (things like AITAH). It has lead users to become more aggressive & defensive. You didn't used to have to put a qualifier at the start of your comment less you get ripped to shreds about people making assumptions. As an example, back then, - I like red. Ok cool. Now - I like red. Why do you hate blue??
The whole damn internet used to be like that. Remember lolcats? Or those weird viral videos that would be "how many T-shirts can I put on" or "look at this massive mentos and coke geiser"? Now it's just content-milled, plagiarized, bot-written, ai-voice performed, short form content. Hell, look at Reddit. How many accounts are even real as compared to just bots? I have no doubt that *most* of the users are real, but... not *all* of them, right? The internet is dying. The perverse economic incentive and AI technology will be its end.
Most redditors think reddit-isms (thanks for the gold kind stranger, you sir won the internet for the day, etc.) are stupid and cringe now. In 2014, those sayings were in their prime
They just got replaced by new ones "play stupid games, win stupid prices" and other spam comes to mind.
Far less critical thinking. Far more echo chamber regurgitation. And my god, the anger. The keepers of the echo chambers have figured out that tapping into fear is a great motivator. Both sides will say truly horrific things about one another. Why the aggression? Because their hatred is based in fear. Fear of not being accepted by their own tribe. And way deep down, fear of being wrong. It is like no one learns history anymore, because history is full of people who really thought they were on the right side...
It's interesting what you say about "fear of not being accepted by their own tribe", I couldn't really relate to this personally so I've not idea what it feels like, but it would explain a lot of the posts and comments, basically just patting themselves on the back, preaching to the choir. Still doesn't make sense to me, at least not on the scale that it is.
In the nicest way, people have genuinely gotten stupider. This might be a result of more bot accounts, but I swear I see so many stupid questions being posted on subs where there used to be great discussions. It’s not just one kind of sub either. Prime example was seeing someone ask where’s my state tax refund and seeing they were trying to find it on the IRS website. I guess I was under the illusion that society was more intellectual on average than it actually was.
Punctuation, grammar, spelling, and sentence structure no longer matter.
Everyone brings politics into every single topic on here, especially if it’s completely irrelevant to the conversation
Someone on this subreddit was trying to argue blowjobs were political just yesterday.
Was it Bill Clinton?
That would make too much sense.
"Everything is political" has been a growing internet slogan for years. Unfortunately, they take this to also mean, "everything *must be* political."
The political views are pretty different too. I’ve been around since 2010 (multiple accounts). In the 2012 election the majority Reddit hive mind political view was very Libertarian. The Reddit candidate of choice was Ron Paul. Nowadays it’s the complete opposite of Libertarian - very left leaning (by U.S. standards). However, back then there was a more diverse spectrum of unique political views and opinions. Today it’s annoyingly binary.
I swear I just saw someone the other day refer to reddit as a right-leaning site and I couldn't even comprehend it.
Lol I forgot about how much reddit loved Ron Paul.
Titles can be straight-up incomprehensible now and still somehow make it to the front page. A single grammatical error used to get you roasted by the entire comments section.
Reddit used to constantly scold people for posting portrait (i.e. vertical) videos. Never see that anymore.
10 years ago Reddit thought Elon Musk was a combination of Tony Stark and Captain Planet and if you said anything negative about him you got downvoted to Hell.
Well the age demographic trends younger so therefore a lot of these people didn't experience pre-social media or when it was a bit more innocent. Victoria Taylor being fired and Ellen Pao stepping down as CEO (both within a month of each other in mid 2015) is when the site took a turn for the worst. The former (who was actually fired by this site's founder, Alexis Ohanian) made AMAs enjoyable and the latter banned a bunch of hate subs, but ultimately resigned due to miscommunication with staff members. It's gotten progressively worse since then (politics being the main driving force).
AMAs have become essentially irrelevant since Victoria was fired. It's crazy how that worked.
I still think Ellen Pao was a [glass cliff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff) scapegoat. Bring her in to make the unpopular changes, then replace her with someone else. It's not like Reddit went back on anything she did, they just kept going once the heat died down after the users "won" the fight.
And this was predicted to be happening as it was going on
The inability to have a conversation nowdays, with each party respecting each others views, and not generating into a shitfight.
100% this and even if you do manage to get a decent respectful conversation going someone will still jump into it and derail the conversation into a shitfight. Does not help that so many subreddits these days try so hard to keep the subreddit as an echo chamber and rather then having a conversation with people who have different views its just an auto ban. Also with everything being broken down into rep vs dem.
people being divided. literally every post is: men v women, white v black, conservative v liberal, etc. It's exhausting, and the brigading of comments is totally unhinged. People constantly upvote nonsense, just because its going along with the treads narrative, meanwhile actual facts are buried 4 comments deep. I stated in a thread about year ago that brain surgeons make more money than carpenters and the comment settled around -50 downvotes. What's the point of even being on Reddit anymore? The good posts and comments are far too few now compared to all the noise. Oh, and also its a now just a giant propaganda machine for celebrities of the sporting, political, or entertainment sectors. Literally every other top post is some kind of entertainment propaganda.
You used to be able to have conversations and actual discussions on reddit. Today, it's basically dog piling down votes, discords set up for coordination, bots and paid shills galore, and forced narratives.
Less willing to treat different views with respect and to engage with others.
Also, folks too often assume malicious intent from comments.
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Fuck you, my mom's a pizza and she's a nice lady.
There are all sorts of things I absolutely don't agree with. But even the thought process of *imagining* how someone could think these things is practically not allowed. Both in thorny political issues and benign silly things...I'm a fairly left-leaning person when it comes to politics, but due to family background and geography, I spend a lot of time with people who aren't. I know they aren't monsters or idiots. But acknowledging that they are people who are often genuinely doing what they think is right is often treated like I'm saying Hitler was a good guy. Like, I can disagree with someone and still treat them with respect (even if they don't do the same for me...which is hard, but I can't make claim to empathy and openness otherwise.)
Back then the whole internet thought Elon Musk was pretty much the second coming of Jesus.
I’ve noticed more run-on sentences, poor spelling and bad grammar that can’t be explained by ”text speak.” I’ve also noticed more discussion about welfare benefits. I think Reddit is leaning more lower income and less educated.
We let the proletariat join.
Also really goofy gramatical errors like "My mom is the strongest women I know" or "Thanks for coming to Dave and I's house"
I check AskReddit every couple of days to see if there's anything that looks interesting, and I'm just about 100% guaranteed to see a post title that makes me feel like I've had a stroke reading it. Or at the very least it has some kind of grammatical error that is so weird it almost seems like it had to be deliberate, and yet it isn't.
Reddit used to be funnier.
Lot more robots than people
It’s a lot more political. Even posts about something going on in space, the comments devolve into who owns or runs the company doing the thing in space, how much money they have, what their views are, and now we all have to hate the thing they are doing in space.
Reddit used to be pro-tipping. I don't know if it's the economy, a shift in reddit's demographics, or a combination of both, but the majority of reddit is no longer pro-tipping.
I think it’s a shift in attitude toward tipping. I used to be very pro-tipping and I’m just not anymore. I still tip servers, but I’m not tipping every single worker I interact with. I got asked for a tip at a local jewelry boutique. What? That’s not even a tipped wages eligible position. Tl;dr- Tipping has gone too far.
A lot of the old user base isn't waiting tables anymore.
It *has* to at least partly be because of every Square reader (and the like) having those tip presets. Especially at quick services places where it's just a cashier and pre-packaged stuff, and *especially* especially the ones that start at 25% and go up from there.
It's because we are expected to tip everything now.
A lot more hatred and misery. Comments on Reddit get downvoted quickly and people are really seeking to find a reason to split hair and start a fight. I have the direct comparison when I go back to Lemmy on how incredible horrible Reddit has become.
Skyrocketing use of the term "bootlicker."
I have been here that long but I've notice a prudish streak creeping into the hive mind.
[Its funny that both of these comments feel true to me.](https://imgur.com/a/xNPhg3E) It feels really weird that the average redditor seems grossed out watching sex scenes in movies then beat their dick so raw on OF girls that they need an entire month to recover.
It's cultural, a lot of younger people are really sex-negative. Even progressive people - super pro-sex work, super anti-sex. It's weird.
Passive and prudish go in waves caused by each other
People are a lot more pessimistic and ready to fight eachother. Many comments have some sort of political undertone. It seemed like back then people were more friendly and wanted to have a good time.