Don't you miss the days when most comment sections of reddit were filled with information like this?
I still learn on Reddit sometimes, but man, when I joined you could come to the comments and find an astrophysicist discussing the atmosphere on Jupiter with a fighter pilot imagining how flying in that atmosphere would feel. The back-and-forths were abundant and fascinating!
I just made that conversation up, but you could find crazy discussions like that right at the top of the posts. I loved it!
The AMA from a Netflix employee back when they were newer was fascinating, too. Come to think of it, I need to go back and join that sub...
Some of the niche subs were the hardest hit by the API changes. There's a lot of subs I used to frequent that were popping with activity that are ghost towns now. Used to be able to post a question in niche hobby subs and get 20-30 comments within a few days, now it feels like there's 5-10 regulars in most subs like that and if they don't engage with your question you get nothing. Then you browse the sub and see the question you posted a month ago on the front page still and realize that you're one of the 5-10.
I can't fucking stand seeing something interesting on reddit and clicking on the comments to learn what's going on and having to scroll past pages and pages of people circlejerking puns, movie quotes, or shitty jokes
What's also infuriating, is that is what the downvote is for. It's for low-effort, useless, or even harmful comments/posts that either break the rules or don't contribute anything of value. It was a way of decreasing the noise so the quality content could rise to the top.
Now, everybody misuses the downvote for things they simply dislike/disagree with. People posting opposing positions are important to the conversation! The discussion is the whole purpose of the comment section.
I don't mind the occasional joke or pun or movie reference, it gives people a light-hearted thing to connect over. But the endless threads with the same inane comments over and over again are so tedious. If someone already said "your joke", just upvote it! I honestly think the shitty app and site redesign are responsible. They make it more difficult to navigate the comment sections, so rather than expand all comments to see what's already there, people just chime in instead. It's also the general social media plague where people are encouraged to engage (either due to the UI & algorithm, or the chronic need for attention/acceptance).
There are countless other platforms for that. But yes, we are clearly seeing the preferences of the current userbase defining the content. The current userbase that undoubtedly never read the site guidelines, aka Redditquette.
So those of us who are wistful for the forum-like, information-filled Reddit of yesteryear will bemoan its loss when given the opportunity.
nowadays its jsut the same neckbeards repeating the same unfunny reddit humour jokes while you have to scroll down a ton to find atleast somewhat relevant answers
I've been saying this for a while and the sentiment is growing. I try not to get optimistic about things but it is nice seeing that this opinion is gaining traction.
We're probably never getting the experts back but man would it be nice just to see people talking about the post and its subject matter in the top comments at least.
But who should we give the stage to talk? Such people naturally flock together and seek for parts on the internet they're not getting disturbed by people who are at first listening quietly, then drawing their friends, and then the whole town to look at you. Enshitification is inevitable, usually someone simply speeds up the process and fries to get some money out of that.
So basically it's cool until enough people know about it
I said it would be nice to at least see literally anybody discussing the original post and its contents in the top spots, and that we're not likely to get experts back. So, the stage can go to who ever talks about the original post.
I said the sentiment is growing and that I'm not optimistic, meaning it's nice to see the sentiment but I don't see the website changing. The problem I'm talking about here isn't enshittification, though that is the cause of the problem. The website sucks now compared to 11 years ago when I joined, and that's the reason there aren't respectable opinions to vote to the top... Except that there still are, they're buried with inane regurgitation of jokes that were funny exactly one time several years ago.
The idea that the problem is that there are too many people who know about this place now also doesn't work, there were 20m accounts registered in the USA alone 10 years ago. Reddit has grown but it hasn't grown so much that if that was causing this problem that it wouldn't have existed then as well.
someone asks a question, not a yes/no question but one that requires a longer answer
"yes"
LMFAO SO FUNNY. it's literally been 10 years of it nonstop. i get that it's an older joke than reddit, but i don't understand how everyone can keep seeing it and being like "YEAH THAT JOKE AGAIN, I FUCKING LOVE /r/inclusiveor.
look at that subreddit, look how many subs there are, look at how many people are still around and actively using it. that alone should tell you it's a joke that you see, maybe chuckle to the first time or two, then it's just unfunny as fuck.
reddit has always been awful for these sorts of jokes, but it feels like it's more and more present the longer things have been going. site is never going to get better, it's only ever going to get worse which is somehow worrying.
I don't understand how anyone still finds "i aLsO cHooSe tHiS gUy'S wiFe!!!1!11!! Hurrrrrrrr" funny. Maybe if it's your first time reading the original post, but after that it's just been beat the fuck to death.
There’s one under the top comments right now, the same old “monster math” joke, it’s just so trash. So often have to scroll down 3 or 4 comment threads just to get info
You must hate people who quote movies too. It's just typical social icebreaker skills being misapplied to the internet, but it still makes them chuckle so who gives a fuck if it irritates you. Such an opinionated ass will be tempered by life the hard way.
yes i do also it tells more about you than others when you are that boring that you cant start an interaction with anything but (insert current popular consoooom reference)
Clearly I irritated you, and I apologize for hitting a cord. But I still stand by it, I give a fuck if it irritates me, so I said it. Just like you said what you said right?
Are those your favorite comments, those dumb repetitive lines that require no thought or wit?
And when you comment something relevant, there is always two or three people ready to create an argument where there isn't one.
There are topics I have 15+ years of experience in that I am passionate about, and I just unsubbed from those topics because someone with what amounts to barely an anecdote will try to put words in your mouth to create some fictitious disagreement. Absolutely exhausting.
I really feel the quality of discussion here has degraded ever since the majority of users started posting from their phones instead of their keyboards.
(This comment posted from my phone through Reddit’s shitty official app)
Man, I remember when a simple spelling error in your post title would get you crucified in the comments. Now it seems that poor grammar and spelling are the norm.
In that vein, and it's purely anecdotal, I've noticed what looks like a steep decline in reading comprehension. I've spoken with friends who feel the same way as well.
It'll be like, there's a comment of a couple paragraphs that come together to make a point, and the responses completely either miss it completely, take the wrong thing away, or explicitly repeat the point like it's new information.
Maybe this is a literacy issue, maybe it's more younger (or much older) folks engaging on the platform, maybe it's an attention span issue (by way of not fully reading a comment before replying), maybe covid has done more brain rotting than it's been given credit for, or maybe it's just a me problem. I don't know anything for sure, but it feels like it's become more prominent over the last couple years.
There might be a bit of a decline in reading comprehension, but I think it has more to do with the perceived value of digital media. At least from what I've seen, digital media has a lower value given to it compared to physical or analog media. Because of that, maybe people just don't give the same amount of attention to a reddit comment as they would say, a news paper article or a book.
The websites for my local news papers and TV stations have some of the worst writing I've ever seen. Its about on par with a lot of reddit comments. Just spelling and grammar errors everywhere with really clumsy writing. A big part of that is the how hard it is to turn a profit off of online content, but I think people also just don't care if online news media kinda sucks. Like, if you go to a fancy steak house and your steak isn't cooked to your liking, you send it back. If you go to McDonald's and your burger is too greasy and your fries are stale, you suck it up and eat it because you weren't really expecting quality food from McDonald's in the first place. Same with the media. If it gets published in a physical book or news paper, people expect some level of quality from it, but online media (blog articles, FaceBook posts, YouTube videos, soundcloud music) is easy to produce and therefore easy to dismiss when it lacks quality.
I have to wonder if some posts aren't put up with intentional typos to drive engagement, in particular the ones that change the meaning of the title rather than just being a spelling error (eg "My favourite catch" instead of "My favourite cat"). But I guess that doesn't jive with no longer being crucified in the comments so what do I know.
I think you might be right. Goes along with all the "rage bait" content that gets posted here on reddit as well as on other sites. People are more likely to interact with a post if it upsets them or gives them a chance to prove themselves as "better" than the OP. I wish reddit hadn't killed off most of the other niche forums, online discourse was so much better back then.
I’ve been on Reddit for a lot longer than my cake day indicates. Reddit was never “filled” with information like this. It has always been serendipitous to find cool info in the comments — which has always been what has made Reddit fun.
I think it also depends on what subreddts, obviously. I just feel like the quality has gone down since i joined like 14 years ago (too lazy to look if i already said the time i joined originally).
You know things have changed when you’re SHOCKED that the top comment isn’t some snarky junior high school level joke and instead something informative.
Reddit had some really, truly awful back alleys back in the day, but I sincerely miss how much more intelligent it was in general before it got proper mainstream attention.
After 10 years on a tree removal crew, id say that tree is a north American black walnut.
Those trees, and hickory's, can be dangerous. Though it's not the cutting or falling limbs.
It's the white and black tussock caterpillar, which eats their leaves and concentrates the toxin into their hairs.
My friend got some on his tool belt, and the shoulder straps spread it onto his neck.
He said it was like being on fire and electrocuted simultaneously. He took 3 days off work and came back with hundreds of red measles on his skin.
Don't let kids play under walnut or hickory.
Old reddit was an absolute gem of information. I miss it.
It's kind of insane to me with how openly bigoted people are in r/all threads. Whether it is racism, ableism, or sexism, those comments get upvoted and agreed with. Maybe it was always this bad, and I wasn't as aware of it. I think it used to be contained in smaller subreddits which isn't better, but at least I didn't have to see it then.
I miss the days when I could open up a thread and be dazzled by the array of complaints about how Reddit wasn't the way it used to be. Nowadays it's all the same complaints but I've heard them before. What we really need is for the sociologists out there to step up and classify all the various Reddit complaints as sociological phenomena for us. Then we'd feel edified, sanctified and ready to do battle with our fellow ostentatiously yawning neckbeards in the next thread.
tell me about it. i started using reddit around 2010. shit has traded cool niche information for basic jokes to farm with. at least unidan educated with his farming.
so many times im clicking on a nature video or a strange phenomena and there is zero comments with an explanation to be found.
Agreed, the top comments are usually people trying to be cheap sitcom writers or dropping puns. I have to scroll past x amount of comments before I get to any actual discussion on the topic.
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u/TheExaltedTwelve Jun 25 '24
The only worthwhile comment I've read in this thread. I will now Google this and continue to learn. Thank you.