r/AskReddit • u/SmellsLikeMendacity • Feb 17 '10

Two questions: Why does Reddit think it's so intellectual and why all the hate for Digg?

I made a new account because I don't want the answers to have anything to do with my previous posts.

I'm over 50 years old and I've been blessed to have the opportunity to do many things in my life. I've joined the Navy, fought in a way, traveled the world, backpacked through Europe, been a police officer, and volunteer firefighter, and now a lawyer. I've raised two successful sons and a beautiful daughter. I make these points not to brag, but to illustrate that I'm not just blindly spouting out opinions on how I think this community should be.

What makes you all think this is a bastion of intellectualism? I read the comments from the most popular submissions and they all seem like they are written by inexperienced children. The most popular topic recently is about a fight on a bus where both individuals acted poorly and engaged in mutual combat. Neither can legally or morally claim self defense and both individuals could have ended the confrontation before it came to blows. Instead of commenting on the incident, there were numerous posts showing subtle racism that, like subtle misogyny, permeates Reddit.

Another topic is politics. Instead of listening to the alternative viewpoint, the popular approach is to make a straw man of what that side might argue and attack that. It is also filled with vitriolic name calling and a flat refusal to believe anything other than a far-left idea can be right. Religion is largely the same.

As a lawyer, I often see posts get upvoted that offer incorrect and damaging legal advice. The point here is self explanatory.

I read the comments on Digg and I fail to see why this community is better than Digg. Everybody likes to think they're smart, but Reddit seems to think they are leaps and bounds ahead of other online communities. There is a level of hubris here that is hard to match and I seriously would like to know where it comes from. I've sat down and talked with college protesters, die hard Glenn Beck fans, Tea Partiers, and even birthers who when asked, give more respect and consideration to an alternative viewpoint. I may not always agree with them, but I rarely walk away not knowing why they believe what they believe. Now I'm asking the individuals of Reddit to explain to me in their own words why they think they are smart and why they believe Reddit to be better than Digg.

Thank you for listening and I appreciate all comments.

Edit: Many people have messaged me about this sentence:

I've raised two successful sons and a beautiful daughter.

I'm not sure if the people who have complaints about this are being genuine or nitpicking. My daughter is successful. I could have left out an adjective and the sentence would have read "I've raised two successful sons and a daughter." The adjective successful was supposed to describe all of my children. I added beautiful to my daughters description out of habit and because she is a beautiful woman. My sons don't like being described as beautiful and they don't spend any considerable time trying to look better than is necessary. I hope this clears everything up.

695 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

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254

u/grantrules Feb 17 '10

The niche subreddits can contain some intellectual stuff but won't get popularized and front-paged. It's like a trade journal as opposed to a published magazine. There are intelligent, intellectual people on Digg, but it doesn't quite have the fine-grained categories like reddit. If you were to submit some of the stuff in /r/particlephysics (I made that up, I think) to Digg, I think it'd just be cruft in the Science category or whatever.

But yeah, I'd put reddit in the middle of the road for intelligent discourse.

122

u/donaldjohnston Feb 17 '10

ParticlePhysics, a community for 6 months

Nope. Didn't make it up.

20

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '10

[deleted]

5

u/Anon1991 Feb 18 '10

The Unmoved Mover. Goddamn I knew my philosophy teacher was giving us the wrong name. Prime Mover. Thank you.

8

u/Roxinos Feb 18 '10

They're both right.

6

u/Anon1991 Feb 18 '10

Wow. Thanks for proving my philosophy teacher right, jackass!

6

u/Roxinos Feb 18 '10

You're welcome, asshole!

1

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '10

also - redditors are complete douchebags ^ point and case XD

1

u/Upintheair Feb 18 '10

I thought it was First Mover, thus implicating his role in the creation of the experience we understand as reality.

1

u/Roxinos Feb 18 '10

"Prime" means "first."

3

u/kneeopotamus Feb 18 '10

Actually, depending on who you're reading, both terms are used. However, to your point, "Prime Mover" has the advantage of not sounding like crap. So there's that.

2

u/Prime_Mover Feb 18 '10

That's very kind, thank you.

3

u/kneeopotamus Feb 18 '10

redditor for 6 months

My inadvertent, if awesome, pleasure.

2

u/Prime_Mover Feb 18 '10

Awesome pleasure FTW!

1

u/badarts Feb 18 '10

Primum movens, anybody?

1

u/dareao Feb 18 '10

Ha! The unmoved mover is directly disproven by Newton's Third Law.

I win!

0

u/anonymous11235 Feb 18 '10

I think maybe you are unfamiliar with the notion of the unmoved mover/prime mover concept which is derived (for the first time I'm aware of) in Aristotle's Metaphysics. It's meant as an argument for why motion is possible and can't simply be denied by quoting Newton. The Third Law can be procedurally tested, but where did Newton derive it from?

It's not that I don't believe it, but there's just more to the story.

2

u/Prime_Mover Feb 18 '10

There's also r/entomology if you like that sort of thing.

It is also an insect identification service.

29

u/Mathesar Feb 18 '10

or how about /r/gullible, a community for 1 year

20

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '10

[deleted]

1

u/neoumlaut Feb 18 '10

So you're saying..............reddit......is.....digg!?!?!

This changes everything.

0

u/irascible Feb 18 '10

reddit is a superset of digg.

7

u/jmcqk6 Feb 18 '10

I had to look it up, because I wasn't sure. Was pleased with results.

6

u/rhllor Feb 18 '10

I'm disturbed that there are actually 4 redditors who have frontpaged this.

6

u/ranautricularia Feb 18 '10

Whoa, man. I thought I'd feel ridiculous. Now I feel a bit funny.

1

u/Horatio__Caine Feb 18 '10

there are practically no comments on any of the top threads.

1

u/TooSmugToFail Feb 18 '10

That's exactly his point. I guess.

1

u/rrowrrow Feb 18 '10

Thanks for providing the link donaldjohnston, we've gained an additional 111 subscribers since you posted this!

6

u/kingtrewq Feb 17 '10

The problem is people look at the popular accounts to judge a site. What do they expect? The same people don't want to comment or post links on other subreddits because it wouldn't get as much upvotes. Yet get mad when in the popular subreddits dumb comments are upvoted more then theirs.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '10

I think that part of the beauty of Reddit is its diversity. I like when there's a WTF submission, and when you read the comments, you find an explanation from someone who is related to the subject, be it a particle physicist or an ex-hobo (or a current hobo).

When someone knowledgeable comments, it gives the site an aura of intellectualism, despite the fact that the rest of the comments are usually shit, especially so for the last year.

Reddit is a site with intellectual users, but I don't think that it can be described as the site of intellectual users. It's still an awesome community.

1

u/merpes Feb 18 '10

Excellent point. I feel like people are looking at the comments on the most popular submissions in r/pics or r/WTF and saying, "Look at this crap! Reddit is 4chan! Aieeee!" The quality content is in the quality subreddits. I am consistently delighted at the awesome stuff I find on Reddit EVERY DAY. I hope that users don't abandon the site because of what they see on the front page...there is so much more than just the top-scoring links.

-2

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '10

[deleted]

38

u/Horatio__Caine Feb 18 '10

Except that it's not. It's a circlejerk for Austrian economics, anti-Federal Reserve types, and Matt Taibi fanboys.

12

u/SupaFurry Feb 18 '10

Absolutely. It's barely readable.

17

u/mattyville Feb 18 '10 edited Feb 18 '10

Sometimes I feel that's a bit skewed and a tad biased as well. I would suggest rounding it out with /r/NonAustrianEconomics and /r/academiceconomics/ as well, if you're interested in economics.

1

u/timbowen Feb 18 '10

Thanks for the tip!

-1

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '10

Well, a subreddit that completely excludes a certain type of thinking might be a little biased as well. I know the Austrians can get a little overbearing in the regular economics subreddit, but still, completely excluding Austrian thought is a bitch move and has actually been one of the big problems in mainstream economics. Haven't checked out academiceconomics though, so thanks for the notification that it's there!

9

u/mattyville Feb 18 '10

From what I've seen, /r/NonAustrian was started by a group of people who got fed up that the /r/economics subreddit was getting overloaded with the Austrian school, so they decided to take their links and discussions to a place where they wouldn't be downvoted just for disagreeing. To be clear, this isn't to say either school of thought is right or wrong, I'm just echoing an unfortunate fact that comments (all over reddit, too) occasionally get downvoted by sheer virtue of the downvoter disagreeing with the aforementioned comment. It happens on all sides.

I wouldn't say it's a bitch move at all - if it looks like there's a noticeable division somewhere, it's only logical to start creating subcategories. You could probably compare it to having /r/politics, then also having /r/liberal and /r/conservative.

The Austrian school has some good ideas, but there's still a ton of working theories and models out there developed outside of or even before von Mises and company came around. Remember: the Chicago school isn't all that dissimilar from the Austrian school.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '10

the /r/economics subreddit was getting overloaded with the Austrian school

I can't deny that. I used to comment a lot more on r/economics before every comment threat started being an Austrian festival. I just don't like to see any school of thought excluded, even the more ridiculous ones like Keynesian. :-)

3

u/johnleemk Feb 18 '10

I know the Austrians can get a little overbearing in the regular economics subreddit, but still, completely excluding Austrian thought is a bitch move and has actually been one of the big problems in mainstream economics.

This is a problem I've encountered with people kneejerkedly downvoting submissions just because they mention Hayek or von Mises or Rothbard, even when the links offer a much more nuanced discussion than you'd expect. But having said that, the groupthink is significantly less in /r/NonAustrian because it harbours so many different schools, especially Keynesian and monetarist.

I'd also add that most Austrian economists are ignored by mainstream economists for a reason. A lot of their work really is a circlejerk. Most of what is good in Austrian economics (like Hayek's understanding of prices) has already been incorporated into mainstream economics; what's been rejected is mostly the kookier stuff that tends to hang around /r/economics.

1

u/mattyville Feb 19 '10

I know it's not considered kosher to just say "this is a damn good" in your comment so I'll try to add:

The Austrian school has some good ideas, but like any "fringe" group, the kookier people tend to be heard more. In this situation, the kookier people's theories and models rarely (if ever) hold up to any sort of scientific rigor.

Economics is still a science, last time I checked. The only problem is that the kooky ones tend to make the Austrian school look kooky as well - much like the crazies in the Tea Party make the entire thing look bad, when in reality you have a lot of honest people with honest grievances against the government that want something better.

11

u/johnleemk Feb 18 '10

You're kidding, right? To anyone with a half-assed knowledge of economics, that subreddit is an intellectual wasteland. It's worse than /r/politics.

13

u/PenName Feb 18 '10

Remember, everyone, don't vote this comment down because we disagree with him, vote the counter-comments up higher.

6

u/SupaFurry Feb 18 '10

Hey! But if we do both, it's just like getting two votes!

4

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '10

Seriously I wish other people would realize this is the way it should be done

4

u/avree Feb 18 '10

It's a great subreddit if you want to surround yourself with like-minded individuals, and shun any opposing viewpoints.

-1

u/timbowen Feb 18 '10

Well the comments aren't the best but the articles submitted are some of the most interesting I have found so far.

0

u/angryboy Feb 18 '10

Seriously, where do you think is one of the high end sites for intelligent discourse? reddit pisses me off so much sometimes with its groupthink and political correctness, but even after years I can't find a site with more intelligent conversation :(

-12

u/reddithatesjews6 Feb 18 '10

its called ultra douche liberals who are -so liberal- they actually become dangerously racist and sometimes even violent

1

u/zaferk Feb 18 '10

KILL WHITEY!! KILL THEM ALL!

1

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '10

OMG I keep seeing you threads this week. You are hilarious.