Reddit used to be a great platform to discuss some topic and get different points of few in a friendly but factual manner. However, slowly it seems like the platform has become a lot more like Facebook, where it’s been invaded by toxic people that are constantly looking for opportunities to shit and hate on others.
The change has been gradual so I really didn’t notice it creep up on me. It’s become super evident now having used Kbin and others for a week or so where people generally seem to be more friendly again and willing to actually discuss things in a usually civil way.
The difference is stark too. Today I replied to a comment saying that I hope things turn out better for them and wound up in a weird comment chain about how people were apparently insensitive for wanting to get a basic haircut that they for some reason couldn’t afford themselves. Meanwhile, Kbin and the Fediverse feels like a refreshing place to actually converse with people once you get past the clunk and figure it out.
I think Reddit may well have reached that main stream social media saturation point where it very objectively now sucks. It happened originally with the internet itself thanks to the rise of the smartphone and this is just another iteration of it. I feel like Spez might as well get that bag at this point because they’ve ruined what used to be the platform people went to for social media without the bullshit, without algorithms to drive “engagement” and to avoid the toxic culture that has prevailed.
Thanks for reading my rant.
It got too big and too accessible. Productive conversation became harder to have as they’d get pushed down by low effort comments from people trying to earn internet points and do little else. That also led to echo chambers which leads people to react rather than discuss. That’s not the whole reason but in my mind that’s a big part of why it degraded so badly.
The karma system was great until it wasn’t. People become so overly attached to fake internet points it’s embarrassing.
And the awards as well. I mean the amount of new awards I have seen introduced in Reddit just in the past 3 years has excessive and kind of cringeworthy tbh.
The awards system immediately lost all meaning it might of had the moment they implemented it.
Reddit silver jpgs were still the best award system that ever was on that website.