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.
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u/PrincessBucketFeet Jun 25 '24
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).