Reddit still sucks and glad I walked away

I made a decision to cut down on Reddit about 3 years ago, however roughly 2 year ago I decided to stop using Reddit completely.

Sometimes though, not often you might need to ask an actual serious question. In my case 2 days ago I had a woodworking related issue and decided I would take it to Reddit.

I had to register a new account for one question. The question also involved a specific brand of tool, omitting this would make the question total nonsense.

Since it was my first post in years, I expanded on it, and made a quality post, only as soon as I submitted, and I mean within milliseconds I noticed the familiar new message icon light up.

Lo and behold “This post has been removed by the moderation………… “. Reason “advertising a tool brand”. I then noticed the list of impossible to adhere to rules of that sub group.

Now I honestly don’t really care enough to chase it up. I simply immediately logged out, and closed the browser tab. I was obviously a bit disappointed, but not too outraged. I remember thinking “Well it’s typical Reddit, what else can you expect”. A site that wants to infuriate you.

What I will say is, Reddit might once very well have been the front page of the internet, but these days that’s all changed and at least to me it’s inevitable that the site is totally doomed and will become extinct. It’s already no longer mainstream and it’s had its day.

Here are the reasons :

1. The moderation. It’s excessive, and in a world where comments and posts are being censored and users are being banned, when such actions are excessive as to infringe on basic free speech and common sense, then all it does is shut down dialog. It stops people wanting to use that platform for communication because there’s a level of dishonesty and predictability to the communication and a frustration when the ability to effectively communicate is removed from the user. Reddit was once upon a time one of the good guys, allowing such free speech that’s all changed.
2. A giant circle jerk. Again if you remove the ability to challenge or truly discuss, what you end up with is content that is sterilized to fit a certain agenda. Content that must be either agreeable (when everyone is agreeing) or disagreeable (when everyone is against something). That might fly for average dimwits but anyone with any kind of intellect consider this pure nonsense.
3. People no longer care. What Reddit and other such social media discussion sites have taught us is to categorize and distinguish between subjective opinion and objective facts. As the internet grows more objective facts get added in their respective bespoke domains, there is still a great demand for objective factual content. The demand or tolerance for subjectivity and anecdotal however is on the decline, to the point where “blogging died”. Most people no longer blog at least not like they were 10 or even 5 years ago. Those days are gone. Reddit is mostly a mix match between subjectivity and objectivity, and requires “sifting”, trying to find any actual information on Reddit without asking an actual question is akin to scanning through a forum website similar to what existed in the late 90’s or early 2000’s.
   
   However while forums aren’t totally dead, there’s usually always a better place to locate info for a specific topic other than “Reddit”. That’s mostly because the actual serious and intelligent user base has been eliminated and those remaining, the kind of people who would tolerate being on Reddit as their platform of choice are those too stupid to fathom alternatives or the problem with Reddit and why it should be boycotted. The content of Reddit is mostly subjective nonsense.
4. It’s a text based platform. Redditors have this believe that their discussions are “actually intelligent” and other platforms such as Youtube are pure nonsense and utter rubbish. That is certainly going to be somewhat true if you’re watching the kind of content found on Reddit, which is mostly utter garbage anyways.
   
   However that’s totally untrue, when you start factoring in bespoke interests, such as engineering topics, music, artistry, dance, fitness, etc. In all these cases Youtube wins hands down. In the case of Youtube, it’s primarily a visual platform. The information contained is presented as a video. However the comment section allows you to connect with not only other users, but the author directly. Unlike with Reddit, users don’t join “sub groups”, instead on Youtube you subscribe to content creators who give you the information you want, inspire you in some way, or actually improve your life. And further content via Patron can be offered. In short for information, Youtube is a great teacher and will make you smarter. Reddit on the other hand could be considered nothing more than a frustrating time sink. For the most part you’re not learning on Reddit, you’re consuming garbage content and reading garbage discussions you won’t remember in a year from now.

Certain things on the internet never totally go away. I mean AOL still technically “exists”, likewise games like Anarchy Online still exist. Reddit still exists but I suspect the only thing keeping it alive are school and college kids looking for memes. For anything else it’s mostly total trash.