I know you all who have been here longer than 3 days are probably sick of the whole ā€œleaving redditā€ post trend here, but I figured this would be a good thing to talk about because I didnā€™t really see it mentioned too much. A lot of people have spoken on here about poor moderation, the whole API debacle, a sort of downward cycle in terms of content quality etc. Plus, when I did bring these things up on my now-deleted reddit account, people mostly resorted to the whole ā€œYou hate capitalism yet you exist in itā€ argument. I also wrote a sort of summary for this in my application, so whoever read my application doesnā€™t really need to read this. I basically said the same shit just shorter.

But for me it was just because people got kinda mean? What I mean is that over the past 4 years (probably accentuated by the pandemic), it felt less and less like a place where you could just talk to somebody. With every post I made, it felt like I was in a competition not just in terms of karma but in terms of making something that pleased as many people as possible. Every title needed to be perfect for the grammar people, every fact needed to be perfect for the fact people, everything needed to be as apolitical as possible.

And even with all of these unwritten rules, I came to realize that there really are just two types of posts or comments on reddit. Thereā€™s jokes, and then thereā€™s debates. Jokes ended up being a little more lenient in terms of unwritten rules so I think thatā€™s why thereā€™s so fucking many of them on reddit and itā€™s almost unavoidable to escape the pit of sarcasm in reddit comment sections. But with debates, it felt like with every comment I made, people came in expecting me to either agree with them or refute a point they made. And if I didnā€™t make ā€œa point,ā€ I wasnā€™t contributing. I couldnā€™t just go ā€œYeah I like Metal Gear Solid V, too,ā€ I had to go ā€œYeah I like Metal Gear Solid V, too, and the guy youā€™re responding to is a fucking moron for not doing so,ā€ or ā€œNo, youā€™re a dumbass, MGS4 is way better.ā€ I remember one time I joined into a conversation and somebody actually replied bullying me for not ā€œcontributingā€ and for posting useless comments, as if I were somehow wasting their time by not trying to argue with them.

And whatā€™s even worse is people just donā€™t seem to know how to be nice about it? Obviously with the internet, people are going to bully you at some point but on reddit it was just all. the. time. Every post I made, every comment I made there was somebody who didnā€™t like it and felt the need to tell me about it by insulting me or my family or my cat. Everyone was mean. It felt truly impossible to disagree with a person on reddit without insulting them, because that was the culture that was accepted there.

While I donā€™t use TikTok, I ended up stumbling upon this series of them by way of YouTube Shorts called ā€œAverage Redditorā€¦ā€ by The Slappable Jerk and I really think they perfectly encapsulate what itā€™s like to browse reddit, and I hate that it took me so long to realize thatā€™s what my experience was like. I kept watching them and going ā€œNah, nobodyā€™s like that,ā€ but then the more I used reddit the more I realized ā€œYeah, itā€™s kind of everybody including myself.ā€ As you can see in the video I linked, the guy is either joking or debating and heā€™s not nice about either one, and frankly thatā€™s kind of how every single one of my reddit experiences has been so far. I canā€™t really remember the last time anybody has been nice to me on reddit. Maybe thatā€™s my fault and my brain is suppressing me from realizing it, but I do think itā€™s a problem inherent in the system if Iā€™m seeing other people doing it to each other also.

I got banned from reddit as a whole a week ago for reporting a guy for calling me a ā€œspastic loserā€ after getting angry when another guy got angry for me not reading some deeper meanings in his 1 sentence post. I think that whole really weird run-on sentence should tell you all you need to know about my reddit experience these past few years. Funnily enough despite it breaking the subredditā€™s rules against insults, it was ā€œreport abuse.ā€

I ended up hearing about Lemmy while browsing today and I deleted my account just now. I saw probably a couple dozen posts at most. It seems kinda slow here. But you know what I didnā€™t see at all? People fighting. Calling each other names. Insulting each other. I saw debates and arguments but I straight up didnā€™t see the same kind of debates and arguments that I saw on reddit. On Reddit I could probably go 3 or 4 posts without that happening, but even posts of 12 comments will always have rude jerks on them. Now Iā€™m still new here, and I have heard that there are toxic and xenophobic instances of Lemmy that are on massive blocklists, but Beehaw so far has been nothing short of just plain joyful. Itā€™s so wonderful to see people online just. talking. to each other. And while I see people swearing (I did it myself in this post), it really just havenā€™t seen it directed at other users on here. On reddit it seems like thereā€™s such a big culture of if youā€™re gonna insult somebody you go for the deepest-cut insult possible. On here I just havenā€™t seen that.

TL;DR: People on reddit are mean. Beehaw (and some other instances of Lemmy I signed up for) are far from that.

/rant

  • UsualMap@fedia.io
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    1 year ago

    Indeed - to be clear I donā€™t have a problem with swearing, but it definitely adds to the overall better vibe over here.

    Regardless of what happens with Reddit I intend to stay.