I have been on reddit for just about 12 years now. Something I’ve noticed over time is just how hateful the place has become. A complete outrage machine. Every single sub became filled with it. I’ve filtered so many subreddits over the last few years, it’s insane. I don’t know enough about this place to be sure, but I do hope it doesn’t become the same type of echo chamber of anger.
Definitely noticed this as well. Another thing that pissed me off was the amount of repost, sometimes done by bot accounts. It became more apparent in small subreddits. Also, onlyfans models spamming most nsfw subreddit.
With the api changes it has exploded with posts misleading everyone with gifs that happened years ago with inflammatory titles, the racism and hate is just left to fester within comment sections etc… It’s really sad to see how much the platform can be damaging to everyone visiting it without moderation. It feels like the funnyjunk website now, but somehow is getting worst. Seeing an entire feed only filled with hate, misinformation, and full of bots.
I struggle with that one, too. Like, the alternatives are better? I think there are a large amount of people who have not found financial stability, and they feel like all they can do is “fight the system”.
Money has no intrinsic value at all. The true wealth is labor. Labor has actual value. The masses own the wealth and we give it to others in exchange for “money”. The power of the rich only remains for as long as they can control the labor. This is why they spread so much fear about AI “taking your jobs”. Every time AI and automation take away a job, it takes away a little bit of power. Because capitalism has taught us, all things being equal, the service or product that costs less is what we buy. Products with an AI labor force don’t have to pay for that labor, and capitalistic competition will drive the prices down. As more and more labor is shifted to AI and automation, those who controlled human labor, the actual wealth, will lose control of that wealth.
If they are unable to stop it, the eventual progression would be replacing all human labor and do away with the need to even have a money system. This will do away with wage slaves, and allow us to focus on learning and having fun. But the billionaires would be no different than everyone else when that playing field is levelled. They hate that. They oppose it. They try and manipulate us to fear AI and to resist it. Capitalism is truly just another system of control.
Just because you don’t understand it you don’t have to belittle people for their opinions. And yes, even poor people are allowed to be heard without judging them for being poor.
I don’t think this is the right place for this kind of discussion. But yeah even people with financial stability can be against the system for good reasons.
Being outraged against a system that exploits the labor of the masses for the profit of the few is not the same as being outraged at other people who disagree with you. You can support capitalism and I don’t need to insult you or make attacks against you personally. Outrage, when it is against something you feel to be harmful is normal. Outrage that is generated by corporate manipulation is not normal. For example, the hatred toward the trans community and drag queens has never been a “thing”.
This is a clip from a Love Boat episode. It aired in 1982. Nobody called them “woke” or even really talked about it the next day. Drag shows have been in US culture since at least the 1920s. I remember, back in the 90s, people would flock to this club in town called “Discovery” on Saturday nights. It was a gay dance club, but on Saturdays, there would often be an equal number of straight couples who came to enjoy the extravagant stage shows, which were similar to something you might see in Vegas. This was in the deep south, too. There were no protests. There were no attacks. There was no violence. There was no outrage.
We have been manipulated because it’s profitable. Oh and, yes, thank capitalism for that. :)
I was also a Digg refuge so spend the last decade and a bit there the biggest gripe with what changed is everyone has the need to be contrarian and be “right” even if that’s making a comment about missing a comma or trying to do some six degrees of Kevin Bacon to get to a non-existent issue in a discussion. No one can just say I don’t enough about X they have to be the biggest nerd in the room at all times.
Then people just downvoted again, so they could feel “right” without anyone contributing to the discussion. So what should be a back and forth of good conversation between people who are interested in a thing becomes a black and white opinion point scoring game of imaginary internet scores.
If you want to go way back, take a look at old BBSes or Usenet. The flame was commonly deployed. For many decades now people have used the internet to look at pictures of cats and also to talk trash or otherwise say horrible things. I don't think Reddit is different in any major way, except that on subs that were decently managed, many of the worst commenters were banned and the worst comments were often down voted into oblivion. It really did depend on the subreddit.
The fact that some people behave like assholes is not in itself anything indicative about a website working well or poorly. In real life some people behave like assholes some of the time too. Of course we have and should continue to take reasonable steps to deal with much of the badness, but we should never expect or aim for perfection on this front.
It’s the politicization of the online space. Chances are it will happen here, or, perhaps worse, lemmy.world will end up filter-bubbling and everyone on the other side of the spectrum will make their own space where we both give the finger to a blank wall and pretend we’re brave.
But yes, it did get worse, because it became less about life and more about the appearance of life, much like most social media.
Only if you used it in a very surface level way. Smaller, niche subs have always been where the best communities are because they don’t attract normies. None of the subreddits I used degraded in quality and I never had issues with moderation. These problems will develop in any online community that bleeds into the mainstream social consciousness.
Only if you used it in a very mainstream, surface level way
Sure, but it’s still remarkable and it does change the tenor of the overall site.
At one point a couple of years ago I peeked at /all and I’m gonna say 85% of the top posts were from subreddits that were basically themed variations of “hey look at this asshole”
That shit definitely filters into the culture, and you see it in comment threads all the time where sometimes idea of a worthwhile contribution is just tagging iamverysmart or whatever
The whole site just primed itself into getting annoyed, pissed off, or outraged about anything at the drop of a hat
As I say, that’s the way all these big social media platforms go eventually. At the moment we are fortunate that Lemmy has a relatively low number of users, so a larger portion of the people who are here are genuinely interested in having a good faith discussion and engaging more with their respective communities. For this reason I’d much prefer Lemmy to grow slowly over time, rather than have a mass influx of normie redditors who are only here because their app stopped working.
It varied for me. For example I lurked on /r/watches and would watch as the group mind ripped to shreds anyone who dared showing a digital that wasn’t Casio or a fashion watch. /R/PLC stayed good the whole time. I guess because we had a common enemy, everyone else in the universe.
I always felt the karma system fed the toxicity. People became more defensive and passive aggressive if someone had downvoted them, and there was a tendency for people to just mass downvote unpopular opinions instead of engage with the user in question. Personally I don’t like that Lemmy has an upvote/downvote system on comments either. Any time you give people a lazy way to say “I don’t like this comment” instead of actually explaining why they don’t like it, the quality of the conversation begins to deteriorate.
Just a point: don’t fall into the trap of thinking that high-intelligence or whatever you think is not “normie” is less prone to all of the very same emotion-driven bullshit as all others.
No matter how intelligent you are, you can’t out-smart your own subconscious because it’s just as “intelligent” as the rest of you.
It has nothing to do with intelligence. With everything, you have people who are passionate and everyone else who is just there to skim off the top. The latter don’t care about degradation of the thing because their interest in it never runs deep enough for them to notice or care.
That would make “normies” the ones “who are just there to skimming off the top” and “people who are passionate” non-“normies”.
Personally I would hesitate to go as far as saying that being passionate is abnormal. Maybe not the majority but not so out there as to be abnormal.
Further, I’ve seen plenty of dumb, negative or wasteful “being passionate about things” (including in myself, though I’m trying to improve). A sports fan fanatic about his or her team is passionate but if that means they’re constantly involved in tribalistic discussions that’s not a positive contribution in any way form or shape. Similarly in my profession (software engineering) the young an passionate types tend to be the most innefective of all (kinda like me swimming before I actually was formally taught how to do it - lots of throwing water all around for little in the way of results).
All this to say that I don’t think “being passionate” is abnormal or always positive.
Well, anchoring your definition of “normative” to what is in the 2020s little more than a tech marketing word targetting the young and naive, is certainly an “interesting” take on mankind.
Roughly 5 years, so I joined when things already went to shit. But I still did notice a decline into utter shit.
What kinda pissed me off the most was the constant know-it-ally behavior. People were wrong but they still defended their standpoint not because they believed in it, but just out of spite. “I don’t care about the truth, I only want to own the others big time!”
Reddit is a site full of bratty children and adults acting like bratty children. The worst part about that is, it is toxic and before you know it you start acting that way yourself. Me included. This whole fuckening was a wakeup call and I am glad it happened.
Yeah I was the same as you, I joined about 5 odd years ago, I needed the push to get off of Reddit, like I still enjoyed it but you say one tiny thing and you’re getting abused by someone sitting on the toilet on the other side of the planet.
I ended up losing a friend because of reddit. They found it and just morphed from cheerful to always in a bad mood. Occasionally picking arguments with me from stuff they had seen on that site. At one point I just told them to stop going there, that they were becoming a nasty person because of it. She said she did but I didn’t believe her.
Early march 2020 I am dealing with the lockdown and watching my entire life deathspiral. My toddler won’t wear a mask, her older sister is crying because she misses her friends at school, I have no idea if I will have a job next week, and my wife is a nurse going into NYC hospital every day. All this going on and my friend sends me an email demanding I get her pictures of the corona beer public burnings going on. That she knows for a fact are happening because she read it on reddit.
I called her and I won’t repeat what I said because I am highly confident it would get me in trouble with LEOs. Not a “hey I know you have small children and your wife works in a hospital in the hardest hit city in the US, are you okay? Is there anything I can do to help?”. No, just an email trying to make fun of the people in my country.
10 year user. I agree what used to be a place for discussion, jokes, fun comment chains, devolved into rage bait and vitriol. I definitely don’t miss it.
While at first I was upset at the destruction of Reddit and lamented my routine, I am now so happy it happened. We all needed a new place to reset and be human again.
The users of reddit in no way mirrored the real world. I consider myself an indepentant in real life, I vote based off of issues that are important to me, I get my news primarily from Reuters and the AP, but I found myself filtering out more and more subreddits as they became filled with hate.
Neutral sounding subreddits such as Politics and News became hate filled groups that attacked anyone right of the far left.
I’ve abstained from contributing to reddit for years due to this and hope Lemmy doesn’t experience the same hate filled fall.
I've seen that as well. I unsubbed from subreddits like r/badcopnodonut, r/leopardsatemyface, and r/hermancainaward months before the API debacle out of outrage fatigue. It's not that I don't care about the injustice, it's just that I got tired of the negativity from the spectacle du jour.
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