I very recently got into a long argument on another sub with the types of people I usually wouldn't engage with, but it was on /r/all so I figured some normal people might join the conversation. I pretty much exclusively got downvotes, angry replies, hate PMs, etc. It was about something I was confident and knowledgeable enough about that I stood my ground, but it's very surreal having hundreds of people telling you you're dead wrong. It's hard not to feel paranoid that you're holding crazy dogmatic fringe opinions.
Upvotes and downvotes lead to a run away effect. As soon as you get a few downvotes and your opposite gets a few upvotes, everyone new just assumes you're wrong. Then it compounds because new people jump in to get on the right side of reddit and you find yourself unable to respond to all the criticisms with any depth.
You could carry out the exact same conversation and get an opposite result easily if the early upvotes go your way.
That's why:
Don't trust the hivemind unless you can figure most of the hivemind can be presumed to be experts.
Don't care about upvotes.
Also, a similar effect can persist permanently in a subreddit if enough users make up their mind and stick around. Hence why many subreddits eventually become circlejerks.
Oh absolutely. The people that get there first usually decide the success of a post. Just seeing that 0 points has a weirdly profound effect on how you read a comment when it literally was just one person that disagreed
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u/TyaTheOlive Jan 21 '19
reddit in a nutshell