Do you still post on Reddit?
There are some very specific kinds of interactions that are much harder to find anywhere else. At the same time, large subreddits tend to have stringent rules, which mods frequently apply in an inconsistent and subjective manner.
I get that it's hard to manage a sub with thousands of people, but at the same time, it is frustrating to make an effort to write a long post just to realize there is no place for it.
To make matters worse, the principle of charity is basically unheard of, and people will evaluate your sentences in such a way to make them the least true, sometimes adding personal hostilities.
Posting on Reddit feels like something that should require a legal department, and I would very much like to stop doing that altogether. At the same time, places like /r/emacs are essential to help me quickly solve issues, and /r/destructiveReaders/ gave me some of the best criticism of my material I have ever had (and I'm including people from outside the Internet).
So I guess it comes up to self-control to not waste my time with subs that are prone to be toxic. But it's hard, sometimes.
Do you still post on Reddit? If so, what are your strategies to avoid unnecessary frustration?
Here's a post from 2004 (before reddit even existed!) that I think about and re-read fairly often: Charles' Rules of Argument
In the end, you're basically in control of how long every argument you're involved in will keep going. If something is frustrating or it's obvious that it's not going to go anywhere, just stop replying and/or turn on the "disable inbox replies"-type functions, and walk away. Even if it keeps going with other people without you, it doesn't matter. You don't need to stay as part of it any longer than you want to, and it helps a lot to learn how to disengage much more quickly as soon as you recognize discussions that won't ever go anywhere useful.
I like the "write the comment, but then click the Cancel button instead of the Post button" technique quite a bit too.
I originally learned this from a manager back in the 1990s as "write the email, but press 'Delete' instead of 'Send'", but the principle is the same.
I've used this method from time to time. It helps. I get the satisfaction of telling some annoying little so-and-so exactly what I think of their dumb ideas, without the subsequent ban.
Another variation is to "write and re-write". Write your initial off-the-cuff comment, then walk away before posting it. Come back to it later, and re-read it when you've cooled down a bit. Revise it. It will need revising!
This is incredibly useful, and has the added benefit of revealing typos too. When I reread something fresh, my brain is often "reading" what it thought it wrote rather than what's actually on the screen. I can't tell you how many comments of mine I've come back to only to find significant errors, whether typographical or thematic, that were invisible to me just an hour or two earlier.
Coco Chanel, the fashion designer, has a famous piece of advice aimed at reducing the tendency to over-accessorize an outfit: "Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off." In addition to later re-readings, I often use a similar rule for my comments, especially if they're likely to be contentious or potentially received poorly: "Before you hit submit, re-read your comment and soften at least one thing."
The softening can be anything: your phrasing, your lead-in, the severity of a rebuttal, the way you characterize their argument, a common ground before getting into the divisive stuff. There are a ton of ways to do it, and I find that when I try to soften just one thing, I often end up changing more than one thing because I start to see all of the barbs and pain points I didn't realize were there initially. I also find that I often write with a generic "you" that comes across as a targeted "you" to readers, so I almost always change those back to "I" statements. I used the generic "you" at the beginning of this paragraph, for example, and I'm leaving it in as an example of how easy it is to speak generally but have it accidentally look specific. Not only is using "I statements" more accurate (I'm speaking for myself about myself rather than anyone else), but it's also far less threatening.
I'll note that by "soften" I'm not advocating for weakening my stance or sliding on my principles. Instead, it's more about how I convey your argument and put it across. It's mostly about finding the human I'm speaking to first before diving into the issue at hand: Did I start out by finding common ground with the poster? Maybe I can try that. If there isn't common ground, what about a common feeling? Even on opposite sides of an issue, people often both feel frustration. That's somewhere I can start to build from! Did I use any particularly charged language or examples that's likely to distract from my overall argument? Is the reader going to feel attacked/belittled/angry when they read what I have to say? If so, will that feeling prevent them from hearing what I have to say?
That kind of internal monologue is what I go through for a lot of my comments, and many times I opt not to post them at all (the cancel method discussed in this thread). I recently had an extended in-person conversation with someone who was diametrically opposed to me, politically speaking, but the conversation we had was good and rich because I strategically softened my messaging without sliding on my beliefs. If I'd engaged with claws out, they wouldn't have even given me the time of day.
I totally understand that this is not always possible, and it's definitely work -- emotional labor. Sometimes I have the throughput for it, and sometimes I don't. The times I don't are when the cancel option is the better one; something not worth editing is often not worth saying in the first place. But when I do have the throughput for it, my comments always end up better for it. I find that I'm able to sand down the ragged edges of often sharp truth into something that that is no less true but certainly more friendly.
I often look for a way to rephrase the sentence in the third person, rather than the second person ("Writers need to review their comments before posting.").
I have also found myself resurrecting the old-fashioned "one" for some cases ("One needs to review one's comments before posting.").
I do that a lot. When I've got something to say but don't care enough to get into an online argument about it, especially on controversial topics.
Great article.
But does it really help manage the frustration, or does the frustration silently build up until you have to create a better alternative to Reddit?
Yep, I still spend most of my time on reddit, simply because the communities for the things I want to discuss are there and not here.
And that's fine. I still check Tildes multiple times per day (more recently with Covid-19).
Just unsub. Whenever I have a bad interaction or see a post that makes me feel like I would have been better off mentally had I just never seen it, then I just jam the unsub button.
I do a similar thing with facebook. I made a custom friends list & then went through each friend and thought to myself, has this person ever posted anything here that I find of value? If so, I added them to the list. Then I set up my phone and browser so that whenever I go to fb, it lands on that custom friend list. If anyone is a dipshit, then I remove them from the list.
Filter bubble, sure, but I go on reddit and fb to waste time while I'm sitting on the toilet, not to hate my friends and family and humanity at large.
This. It's easy to stay out of toxic subreddits. Only read your subscribed front page, rather than /r/All or /r/Popular, and curate your subscriptions very carefully. Unsubscribe if a subreddit allows toxic behaviour.
Before I started actively browsing reddit around late 2010, I used to be super active in a number of different forums centered around my hobbies, even moderating and becoming an admin on a few of them. At the time, I really enjoyed it, and posting online to forums was one of my favorite things to do.
Something about reddit really turned me off to posting in general, despite the excellent content. Maybe it was the karma system, or I had burned out from posting to communities online after my years-long stint as a moderator and admin in a few different forums. I really couldn't place it, but it was like suddenly I was more interested in just consuming content and moving on instead of engaging it. I rarely even upvote or downvote anything. I also think as I aged and matured, shouting into the void online seemed less and less interesting. I had a post or two on reddit that garnered thousands of upvotes, and I remember I didn't really feel anything, aside from just luck and a mild "huh, that's cool" feeling.
These days, I'll rarely post (for generally no rhyme or reason), and when I do, it's in the small niche subs that are related to some hobby or topic I like. Some topics will get me going and I'll engage, or if I'm an expert on a topic and I think I can meaningfully contribute, I will. Other days, something will spark my interest and I'll post something. I suppose it also has to do with my profession—I write long technical documents all day, so coming home and writing even more feels like work.
I've found that I really thrive in smaller communities with less noise, which is why I really like Tildes. I'm trying to "break out of my shell" so to speak and post more, but often times I'll read someone's comment and think "well, that's essentially what I would've said, so there's no use in posting."
I suppose on the plus side, I haven't been in a internet argument in years, but likely because these days, I simply don't care. Trolls are a dime a dozen and I've been in plenty of internet arguments in the past that I'm not particularly proud of, so for my own sanity I just move along.
I went about 18 months without posting but recently broke that streak to comment on a ... ugh, this is embarrassing, Love Is Blind episode thread. Whatever, it was a fun guilty pleasure to watch. Anyway, if you haven't seen the show, there was a male participant that is bisexual and his partner's reaction to his coming out sparked a debate about homophobia in the thread. I carefully and thoughtfully posted a comment about my thoughts on the subject in response to another comment and was instantly downvoted. Just to be clear, there's no way people downvoted me because they assumed my comment was homophobic; I argued that a non-homophobic person wouldn't care if their partner's previous relationships were same-sex or not. Either way, it was a long and thoughtful comment that added to the conversation. I didn't care if people disagreed with me, or that the average position on that issue is probably less progressive than it was a decade ago, but I was really annoyed that ~15 people would just downvote instead of engaging in a thoughtful conversation.
I know there are smaller communities with a higher standards, but the thing that originally made me love reddit was the idea that great conversations could exist in a thread about something silly like a reality TV show. It's a lot harder to randomly come across quality content these days, and the odds that I'll have a positive response to my comments are pretty slim. It's just not worth the time. Also, by getting away from reddit and replacing it with tildes, I've had more time to dedicate to healthier activities and have been more socially active in real life. I know a lot of people wish there was more daily participation on this site (sometimes I feel that way), but having fewer topics to explore makes it easier to put my phone down/walk away from my computer and do something else.
Nope. I no longer post and haven't done so in years. reddit isn't entirely out of my life though. I still check in on reddit occasionally for a few purposes:
To me, reddit has evolved away from what I wanted it to be, so leaving it was relatively easy. When I first joined reddit, it felt very much like Tildes does now. I loved it. I genuinely poured my heart and soul into it for my first couple of years. Unfortunately, as it grew, it evolved, and I too was growing and changing.
I remember back when Twitter first entered the social media scene, and its 140 character limit was a hot topic. It limited expression! It reduced everything to simple soundbytes! How much genuine expression can you convey in such a short snippet? reddit, correspondingly, had no character limit. People could post things that were longer, more thoughtful, more nuanced, and ultimately far more insightful. I loved reddit for this.
As an experiment, go on reddit today, open the comments for a random topic, and look at how many comments would fit in 140 character tweets. Even if a comment breaks that low character limit, it is usually only a single sentence or two at max. Rarely will you see full paragraphs. This is less pronounced on more niche or targeted content, but for anything in any of the more popular subreddits, it's the dominant form of discourse. And there are so many of them! Hundreds. Thousands. Tens of thousands. The comments for any given topic look more like a nested chatroom than a forum.
Anyone who's seen my posting around here knows I like to write extensively, often excruciatingly long posts. I can barely get one of my ideas started in a single sentence, much less see it through to the end! While I can certainly appreciate the link between brevity and wit, and I'm not above loving a great one-liner, I don't want that to be the only or even the dominant type of posting that I spend my time with.
There is clearly a demand for this type of shorter, quicker content and commentary, and I'm not judging it as fundamentally bad or anything like that. I am simply noting that it's not for me. I left Mastodon for the same reasons, and I think Mastodon as a platform is actually pretty cool. It's just that perpetual feeds of bite-sized content are the complete opposite of where and how I want to spend my time. I want sincerity and thoughtfulness and length of expression -- attentional meals rather than snacks.
I want to cut down on the noisiness of my life, and nearly all of the content that I see on reddit is attentional clutter. If my mental focus is a room, I'd rather clear it out, keeping only a few valuables, than have it filled with piles of random things stacked from corner to corner. reddit is ultimately, for me at least, too much of too little, so I don't give it a place to live in my house.
I have a bunch of half-formed thoughts that I'll probably try to crystallize into a proper blog post someday, but the premise is basically: "Reddit is now a meme app that continues to host vestigial discussion boards".
There are still lots of higher-quality, discussion-based subreddits on the site, but they're almost more of a historical artifact now that continue to exist on Reddit more out of inertia (and moderator perseverance) than anything else. Reddit-the-company does almost nothing to support them any more, and many of the newer updates do more to hurt that type of subreddit than help them.
I wouldn't disagree with that.
Yep. I helped to found a discussion-based subreddit 7 years ago, and by 4 years ago I was telling my fellow moderators I felt like the proverbial boy plugging holes in the dyke while the tide of shallowness swelled higher and higher on the other side. Maintaining a high-quality discussion subreddit requires full-time active moderator effort; it's not a default state on Reddit. It's like fighting entropy: it can be done, but it's a lot of work and as soon as you stop, entropy starts increasing again.
I still have a pet project subreddit that I started 3 years ago, and it requires ongoing vigilance just to maintain civility, let alone quality.
That idea you had for a whole-community invite is seeming more like the right way to go all the time. :)
That's a good way to look at it. The amount of noise to actual, useful information is extremely high and has been trending towards more noise and less good content for some time now.
I deleted my account because I spent too much time on there, even before Tildes. I still read posts and get angry at comments, but posting isn't really an option for me, so I guess I'm in a bit of a weird place.
That has been my experience as well. In the vanishingly few areas in which I am knowledgable, I was astounded to discover that opinion and tribe affiliation seemed to matter more than logic or facts. But perhaps that is how things are generally with our species at present?
At the same time, there are amazing communities and contributors all over reddit; it has just gone to a largely read-only experience for me.
No. The only activity I have there is keeping an eye on /r/tildes to send out invites. I still occasionally browse it for interesting content, but even then I don't bother reading comments anymore unless it's something in a niche subreddit.
You no longer participating in L2T?
I browse it, but my last moderation action over there was years ago. The younger mods have it now.
That kinda makes me a bit sad, even though I basically abandoned reddit other than /r/tildes too. End of an era. :(
Yep, and the beginning of a better one. ;)
I certainly hope so! And silver lining, at least this one feels like it has far more potential thanks to Deimos being at the helm. :P
I recently deleted my reddit account after nearly 12 years.
I was fairly active in a few subreddits, but at some point, they all turn into a place that doesn't tolerate new ideas or anything that disagrees with the majority. Once a subreddit (or any forum) reaches a certain size, it just becomes a combative place.
There's no civil disagreement. It's always a black and white, you're wrong and I'm right, argument. Some subreddits are better about that but most don't moderate comments unless they're just off topic or blatantly threatening someone. (That's one of the reasons I like Tildes. I've seen multiple instances of arguments turning nasty and getting deleted - I was involved in one myself).
It's just not a very welcoming environment anymore (if it ever was). It got to a point where I wouldn't bother posting things because someone would complain or start an argument. When it gets that bad, why even visit a site anymore?
For example, on the /r/Apple subreddit, I'll occasionally point out that Apple is pushing privacy because it sees it as a marketing tool. There's not any substantive discussion, just people downvoting. The same thing happens on the /r/Android subreddit. I said I liked the design of the Pixel 4 once and it was my most downvoted comment on my profile for a long time.
There are a few great subreddits that I was a member of (/r/boutiquebluray comes to mind and my wife says the sewing communities are generally pretty good) but the post volumes were so low that there wasn't a lot of discussion. And I guess that's the catch-22. You've got to find a place that has the right mix of size and frequency of posts that keep you coming back to read the new stuff but keeps the trolls away.
I got a lot of good times out of reddit though.
I typically am still active in subreddits related to the video game(s) I'm currently playing. And even then, the "primary" subreddit for those games tend to focus on memes or esports discussions - where I'm typically looking for strategy and discussion.
For example, I would use...
And so on and so forth.
I also have a NSFW account, which actually makes good use of reddit. There are lots of niche subreddits for niche kinks/fetishes/desires - so its very easy to find a relatively small subreddit to contribute to or partake in.
It depends very much on the group. For example I read the accordion subreddit, occasionally comment to answer a question, and very rarely start a topic.
I think that the best strategy is to remember that it's ok to read and not post.
I post regularly on Reddit, and intend to keep posting for the foreseeable future.
I created a subreddit 3 years ago (on a different account) and I am still running it. One thing I told my fellow mods is that we have to make sure there is at least one fresh post in our subreddit every single day (because of how Reddit's algorithms work to suppress posts that are more than 24 hours old). We have done that for 3 whole years. We have posted something fresh in our subreddit every day, and I've done the bulk of that work: tracking down relevant articles/videos, and posting them. And I intend to go on doing it.
Most of my posting on Reddit has been of links, rather than walls of text. If I do write a post, it's usually with a specific subreddit in mind (such as when I used to moderate a sci-fi related subreddit and I would write posts to prompt discussion in the sub).
As for subreddits which are toxic, I just ignore them. I don't subscribe to them in the first place, or I unsubscribe if a subreddit becomes toxic. I focus only on the good subreddits. I don't see lots of parts of Reddit. The only way I ever knew about "bad" subreddits was when discussion about them turned up somewhere like /r/TheoryOfReddit.
Finally, as a long-term moderator on Reddit, I know what I can and can't do, and where I can and can't do it. That helps.
I do read the rules of every subreddit where I post, and I also read at least a few threads to get the hang of it (usually much more). I still face random and subjective mod action that makes me frustrated, and less inclined to make an effort to produce good and adequate content in the future. These are not short posts.
I understand mods are not paid, and that Reddit is not the supreme court, but that is still quite underwhelming.
Good moderators shouldn't come across as random and subjective. Find better subreddits with better moderators.
I try! lol
Don't wait for someone else to post about their subreddit where you can read it. Be proactive and search for their subreddit.
I still post a decent amount on Reddit, but only on things that I can't post on Tildes. At this point, my reddit account is (1) A collection of environmental subs that I use to keep up-to-date and will post on tildes if I want to discuss them, (2) /r/tattoos to see cool tattoos people are getting, and (3) Sports/team subreddits. Reddit posting for me is basically an ability to stay connected with the fans of my local sports while living in a different city, and to talk to esports fans (though I tend to avoid game subs like /r/leagueoflegends and /r/smash and stick more to team subs like /r/clg or /r/teamliquid)
Yes. I managed to avoid reddit for 20 days as part of giving stuff up for Lent but there is simply so much stuff going on at the moment that i was missing out on important news and updates. Even just the past 2 days i have been back, i have been heavily and frequently reminded why i wanted to leave as its such a toxic place filled with such self righteous unfunny noise but i've not found anywhere else i can find the information/communities to replace it. If anyone knows of other Pro-wrestling, MMA or Geopolitics communities other than reddit id love to have a link.
Unfortunately there is no way to avoid the toxicity other than smaller subs. It's one thing i find interesting/disappointing about reddit is that subreddits rarely branch into smaller more focused subreddits. MMA is a subreddit that used to be one of my home subreddits but now its just a clusterfuck of idiots shouting "hilarious" memes in the comments. I would have thought a subreddit called MMAtalk (or something like that) that was a place to talk about mma in a more moderated but still casual way would catch on but on reddit it simply wouldnt.
The only subreddit i have seen this sort of work is /r/CredibleDefense which has /r/LessCredibleDefence and /r/NonCredibleDefense for more casual talk and memes respectively. All are interesting places to visit because each mostly stay in their lane.
Yes. I’ve been on reddit since 2005. Basically half my life, and practically all of reddit’s life. It’s far bigger and has far more active niche communities than any alternative. I tend to avoid the most popular or most toxic subreddits, but the site still has some of my favorite communities on the internet.
When I first joined tildes, I spent less time on reddit. But I quickly found that this site just could not fill that gap. It’s too small and insular. Not that I dislike the site (if I did I wouldn’t be posting this), but it’s not trying to be all the things which I go to reddit for. As for the other reddit-alikes, they’re even further off the mark in terms of filling that niche.
No, it's an awful place and I've done a lot in the past few years to get away from places like it. My accounts were deleted soon after it became clear that Tildes was here to stay, and I haven't really looked back.
Reddit is still a useful place, though. The community resources for even the smallest of sub-communities and niche interests are unmatched. So I end up on Reddit a lot, the difference is that I'm not going to Reddit and using it as a Redditor, I'm landing there from a search engine, getting what I need, and leaving.
I just want to throw out there that quitting is an option that is plenty doable and shouldn't be seen as just the ridiculous nuclear option. Like, you might be able to salvage a good experience on that website, I don't wanna act like it's impossible. Just, before you try that, honestly take a look at the time you spend there and ask if it's worth all the meta-effort toward learning to fight back against the userbase and site mechanics in a way that makes using it tolerable, when there are spaces you could be spending your time in which are not that deeply broken.
Not much. Most of the posts I make are political compass memes and most of my comments are short and quippy. Some memes are fun and there are some niche things this site is too small to do but otherwise it's just pretty boring.
I have never been a big poster/commenter anywhere but I still use Reddit frequently. I pretty much avoid all large subs and sticks to ones that are either more niche interests, have good discussion (/r/NeutralPolitics for example), or about some tech project I like to keep up on (like /r/GrapheneOS). Once you start getting to larger subs a circlejerk starts to form, and as we know, mods go wild. Therefore, I stick to heavily moderated ones with strict rules or just smaller subreddits. There you can get good discussion.
Posting is rare 'cause I don't make enough stuff worthy of posting. The most recent contentful post that isn't my mods was suggestions on design for Disco Elysium, given that I have no other channel to communicate with the team through. I'm quite proud of the little redesign job at the end of the post.
I found zero-tolerance muting policy to be an effective tool for mental health. It's served me well when I remember to use it.