I just spent about an hour trying to have a civil discussion on Reddit, to no end. It really makes me appreciate Tildes.
Everything I said was heavily downvoted, even though I was making valid points and 90% of the replies were mockery or useless dribble. The few people that attempted to engage in discussion with me were either just has heavily downvoted as me (even though their views were opposing mine) or were unable to do it in a logical or civil manor. It wasn't even a really controversial topic, my opinion is just something that is in contrast of the greater "hivemind".
I know we are not where I think most of us would like to be just yet, but I had not been back on Reddit for a while and I feel like I made a good decision by distancing myself from the Reddit community. I really enjoy the community we are building here.
Anyway, I kinda just felt like I needed to post this. I know it's not really high quality content (and I honestly had no clue where to post it), but I wanted you guys to know I appreciate all of you.
❤
Other than the /r/tildes invite threads, I have only used reddit once in over 3 months (just to pop in to a No Man's Sky post I found via google to provide a bug fix I discovered) despite being an incredibly heavy user of it for over 12 years. Tildes doesn't have nearly the same depth of content as reddit yet and there have been some growing pains (e.g. needless meta-drama), which we will likely have more of as the site develops, but overall I am super happy here. And the more time I spend looking over reddit accounts that have requested invites to Tildes, where the vast majority of their most "controversial" and heavily downvoted comments are just them simply expressing opinions that go against the prevailing groupthink, the less desire I have to ever go back there and the more determined I am to help Tildes thrive.
p.s. I honestly believe that Tildes could literally be a feature-for-feature clone of reddit, but just with the downvotes removed and it would already be leaps and bounds better than reddit. But the fact that Tildes is a non-profit + opensource (and always will be), Deimos actually takes user suggestions/ideas and code contributions seriously (which reddit never did) and he is also willing to take a firm stance against hatespeech, personal attacks and harassment (which reddit refuses to do)... all of that makes Tildes' potential so much greater than reddit's ever was.
I don't think I will disconnect from reddit to that extent any time soon. I like tracking sports through the various sports subreddits too much to leave it yet. There's also a certain amount of low-effort content I still enjoy, not afraid to admit that - I physically can't do hardcore in-depth discussion all the time.
We all agree reddit's size is one of its weaknesses, but that size has also spawned infinite niche forums for practically every single interest I have (as inefficient as subreddits are). Every TV show and every podcast I like has a place for people to discuss it.
Very much why I'm still active there. There are no better communities for my local sports teams than those on reddit. I know because I've searched for years. The NBA subreddit for my team is very well done, very well moderated, and constantly updated. Mods are responsive and non-reactionary, and actually seem to bring a human element to decisions, something sorely lacking in a lot of larger subs like r/NBA—a toxic, arbitrarily-moderated mess. Same with TV shows. I could never give up the fun that is r/OakIsland, with its inside jokes and general goofiness, at least while the show is still alive. It's a nice break from serious discussion, something I think you'll always have people seeking elsewhere if it never evolves on Tildes.
I was never a fan of low-effort content. I chuckled at the occasional meme but never once subscribed to any subreddits dedicated to them and found the vast majority of them extremely annoying. I also follow a grand total of zero sports, so those facts certainly contributed to my ease of disconnecting from reddit entirely so early.
I totally get that not everyone will (or should) follow suit though, especially while Tildes is still in its infancy... but I definitely think this place has just as much potential (if not more) than reddit and I have faith that eventually it will also have a similar level of depth in terms of content, since "If you build it, they will come." ;)
I think it's about 50/50 for me between Tildes and reddit. Maybe one of these days I'll finally delete my reddit accounts.
I have been a user on Reddit since 2008. The only thing that would truly stop me from visiting at least on an occasional basis would be them taking away the ability to use the original user interface (I despise the redesign).
But, I would say Tildes is already my first choice for the site I visit (even if the content is limited). Today was the first time I have spent any real amount of time on Reddit since joining Tildes.
I finally forced myself to delete mine. It's oddly freeing in a way. 3,000 link karma and 30,000 comment karma, gone. No more useless internet points with which to arbitrarily measure my value. No more stupidly stressing about a few downvotes.
Don't get it twisted, Tildes is as much of a circlejerk as any place on the internet, we just use more words to make the same points that people in our subgroups already agree with.
Not necessarily. Even when things get heated here most of us make the attempt to discuss the subject. No one is just automatically resorting to swearing and mockery.
Not to mention, intelligent replies are encouraged and expected here, but often ridiculed on Reddit.
no u
I couldn't think of a more perfect reply. 😂
There's a real risk of over-intelligizing conversations though (see, for a really good example, the whole LessWrong/rationalist movement), which can tend to make things a lot more complicated than they are.
(that being said I enjoy some articles coming from ssc/lw/etc)
I think that after the spike in drama that we had fairly recently, these kinds of comments focusing on the positive aspects of this community are a much-needed breath of fresh air. Thank you for this :)
Did I miss something? What drama are you talking about?
Racists where being racist while trying to pretend not to be racist. Someone's comment was removed and they got upset and made a post saying that tildes was being ruined by censorship. I'm not going to link anything because it's better to let that stuff die rather than calling more attention to it.
Whoa, I missed that. Rather glad, too. I like that Deimos has a strong stance against things like that, and it's one of the reasons I'm here in the first place.
The drama Eylrid is referring to happened a week before you joined.
And that would be why I missed it. :)
Seriously let them go rot in the_donald. I joined this site to get away from racists.
It's nice seeing so many people joining Tildes as a reaction to hate on Reddit, rather than as a reaction to hate subs being banned (as seemingly happened with Voat). That plus Deimos make me really optimistic about the future of this site.
It's not mentioned, so to be clear they did get banned.
Yep, there is no "report" mechanism as such, but if anything truly crosses the line into behavior harmful to the site, PM it to Deimos and it'll get taken care of.
Yeah I really noticed the difference when I was reading a thread where two very opposite views where being discussed and stuff people have strong feelings about, it was about drug use and addiction. You could tell what the dominant opinion was by the votes but not having any negative voting plus the culture of the site meant you didn't get one side wiping the other with just down votes but rather long responses addressing the issues. Same with that UBI post, really interesting stuff, I'm amazed at the level of expertise with such a relatively small userbase.
Sorting by controversial on reddit is a game changer if you haven't tried that.
I was actually part of that, and I really appreciated the way that other people presented their views. I was worried at first that things would go down hill (based on my experiance else where). I was pleasantly surprised. No one was ugly and I was able to learn about a perspective I hadn't considered before.
Even HN greys out really downvoted comments which is better than strictly showing the vote count but still annoying and I wish they wouldn't do it
The gray comments tend to be memes or troll posts though.
The main reason I like tildes, even though Im not SUPER active, is that I can go to a thread and not have to scroll past three pages of puns to get to conversation/explaination.
Oh god this. The first 20 upvoted comments are sure to be trash
!RemindMe 4 years
We need an integrated tip-bot and remind-me bot for Tildes, asap.
Reddit's bot spam is the last thing I want to see on Tildes...
Well, if/when Tildes implements dedicated bot accounts (so they can easily be filtered out), a CLI (command line interface for interacting with them without needing to leave a visible comment anywhere) and/or "whisper" comments (comments auto-collapsed by default) then even with bots on the site that won't be an issue. ;)
Those are the current ideas that have been come up with to deal with the problems bots create, anyways. But doing away with them entirely isn't a great idea, IMO, since bots can be incredibly useful, they are just often incredibly poorly executed and have been allowed to run rampant on reddit. That won't be allowed to happen here.
I'd really like if it the bots were forced to be open source as well, so we can link to their repositories and help spur development of few, good bots instead of hundreds of bad bots that are for the most part all duplicating effort / doing the same things. That might make a good requirement for getting a 'bot' account here.
I would strongly challenge that. In 7 years of participating on Reddit, I saw only two bots that were useful, and they were useful to me only as a moderator - and only in the context of Reddit, meaning that similar bots would not be needed on Tildes.
All other bots are just noise. At the very least, Tildes should prevent all bots from posting comments in threads: if people want bots, they can have them in their PMs, and not cluttering up threads that everyone else is trying to read.
I didn't say that I wanted Doggobot or any of the truly useless ones, or even to have them as bots at all, just native functions that fill the roles they played, perhaps.
One day I'd like to come here and see the top post be about something other than petty reddit drama but hey ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Most of the population has migrated here from Reddit, so it's probably going to be a while.
But, I wasn't trying to be dramatic, sorry if it came across that way.
Just out of curiosity, what was the conversation about?
Not gonna lie, I was planning on not posting it here because I didn't want to start anything.
But the catalyst was this starterpack. It was being portrayed as something negative.
My argument was that when you really look at each of the things contained within the starter pack they are not necessarily as negative as they are being made out to be and may even be aspects that represent a large majority of American's ideal lifestyle. Granted I was looking at each of them in a pretty simplified way and most everyone else sees each item as an extreme.
It's making fun of people who think being conservative is at all punk. Which is...true, actually.
If you want to see what they're talking about, let me show you a wonderful subreddit called /r/The_Donald, and their relatively recent thread on NOFX frontman, Fat Mike, trying to claim that Conservatism was always punk. Right here, plain as day.
There's this conservative trend of taking labels that don't fit them at all, and claiming that they are them. Ironically, it generally interferes with the word "conservative."
I'm not going to -1 you here, or anything, but...I think you're pretty misguided in your thinking here. Like, extremely misguided; missing the point of the joke entirely.
I'm surprised that this point was so easily missed.
To reiterate, the entire point of the joke is to contrast the "new punk rock" part with things that are very clearly the opposite of punk rock. It's not necessarily saying that any of those particular things is bad, just that the title "punk rock" is an ill-fitting one.
People wanna miss what they wanna miss. It's gonna happen no matter what, really. But yeah, it's a bit frustrating, regardless.
I genuinely love the comment section there; so many people thinking "Punk" = "Liberal," when most punks want liberals to go fuck themselves for letting things get as bad as they are again. Honestly, the best political song I've heard in years is one from a bootleg tape of an album that hasn't even come out yet, so I'm looking forward to being able to share it with others and being like 'See? This is how you write a fucking political punk song for mainstream consumption.'
Laura Jane Grace, but I haven't a clue on whether it's coming on her solo album or the new Against Me! record yet.
We're getting a new AM!? Heck yeah.
And a new Laura Jane Grace motherfucking solo album. Heart Burns was an amazing one, and the track she's released from the new one so far officially is pretty comfy, if a bit "New Waves B-Sides"-ish.
The Parklife Forever or something else?
Nah, Apocalypse Now (and Later.)
Not really a punk song, but really nice overall.
I will check it out.
Personally, I'm just squealing because John Darnielle just dropped a new tMG out of nowhere!
Yeah there has been a lot out out this year. Interpol even had a new album out.
I sooooo want the new AM! record to sound like White Crosses/Black Crosses. If it does, I can die happy.
I didn't miss the joke, I just didn't think it was a real thing (still don't). I am a centrist and have a lot of conservative friends, I have never heard anyone claim conservative is punk, not once, and I have a lot of friends that fit into that stereotype pretty closely. They tend to be quiet and respectful people.
I don't want to derail this thread and I definitely don't want to reignite your argument, but I'm curious how you view "idealizing the white nuclear family" and "no subversive art or music" as good things. Further, I'm confused be
Isn't that exactly the point of the starter pack? That it's insane to claim you're counterculture when you're supporting the dominant traditions and ideologies in most if not almost all the country?
... I'm going to anyway. :)
What I really mean when I say this is "I want to hear your argument and when I inevitably disagree with it I'm going to force myself to walk away instead of reigniting it" haha
That's admirable of you. Now, can you speak for the many other Tildeans who'll see that argument you asked for? Will they all also force themselves to walk away? Or will one of them decide to step up and post their disagreement?
Why does this argument need to be conducted here, anyway? If you're that interested in this "starter pack" meme and the arguments around it, just go to Reddit and participate in the relevant thread. They do those sort of arguments; Tildes doesn't.
=)
This is a fair argument, but surely you realize that most conservatives aren't including same-gender parents when they glorify the "nuclear family", no?
Further, there's a slew of reasons one might not be able to have a nuclear family structure. If one parent has passed away, should the other remarry even without love just so their child can have a second parent? Should loveless marriages be maintained "for the children"? Should an abuse victim stay in their relationship, even though leaving would undoubtedly be better for the kids?
As another point, some people just prefer not to be in a long-term relationship but are still good parents. I'm sure you don't propose forcing single parents into relationships. There's an easier way to combat the problems that children outside the "nuclear family" structure face; better support from welfare, for example, or better after-school programs.
And none of this touches on stable polyamorous triads, for example. If two role models and incomes are good for a child, surely three or four would be even better.
And finally, none of this has anything to do with conservatism being punk. You're arguing in favor of the status quo.
Don't forget the family structures some other cultures have, such as grandparents or uncles/aunts living with the parents, or multiple related families living together. Those take the phrase "it takes a village to raise a child" a little more seriously. ;)
I feel like you're conflating "stable family" with "nuclear family". Nuclear family has a specific definition and it's not what you're claiming.
Maybe you weren't, but the starter pack in question was talking about that idea. It wasn't saying "white nuclear families are bad", it was saying "the 1950s ideal family structure is not punk". "Punk" here doesn't mean "good", it means "anti-conformist".
Sure. I can touch on my view on the situation a bit.
The way I see it if someone doesn't listen to subversive music thats fine, they can have whatever taste in art and music they want. I would never fault someone for having more mild likes.
As far as the nuclear family thing is concerned, take out the "white" part. The nuclear family is something that applies to all races and sexual orientations and is proven to be one of the healthiest ways for children to grow up.
They were just viewing everything in the starter pack as negative things, I see most of that stuff as greater parts of a functioning society.
Starterpack jokes are about the whole though, responding to them with "well each of those things individually..." misses the point.
Aside from that: /r/starterpacks is basically just passive-aggressive /r/puncheablefaces, I wouldn't have expected any sort of valuable discussiom from there ever.
~Also I mean stating you believe in the majority-opinion isn't really punk. Like...at all. It's the opposite of counterculture as a whole, actually.~
Persecution complexes are a powerful thing.
No joke.
Oh yeah, that thread's a shitshow. OP's baiting people to get downvoted.
There is something inhuman about talking online that really discourages me from doing it. People are complex creatures that use more than words to communicate, and all that is lost to uniform and simple bits and bytes.
It's like there is something about real, physical humanity that lends value to civil discussion. Remove it, and people seem to turn into just talking beasts. I can't quite put my finger on it, but talking online is like talking to a mirror; you superficially get the experience of talking to another person, but you always know what they're going to say and the more you try to get them to say something new, the more frustrated you get. Their words, whether it's your reflection or digital text, never really mean anything. It's just insanity, and it really isn't worth it.
You just have to find places that encourage discussion. I've had plenty of civil debates with people online (and on reddit) about things I would never have been willing to talk about in real life without it going off the rails.
This is one of the reasons I hate twitter. The format encourages jumping in to random conversations without context and spitting out fast and loose insults.
It's depressing really; Reddit used to be my go-to place for civil discussions. You can still find it, but only on very specific subreddits. It's too mainstream now and the goals have changed. Hopefully Tildes can fill the gap.
This is my main reason for being here. For me, the fact that we encourage intelligent reply and discourage meaningless comments is huge. I still visit reddit for the bigger subs I mod and some more niche stuff, but Tildes is my main site now.