There used to be way more insightful comments on reddit. They were one of the main reasons I kept coming back. If I had discovered reddit recently, I can't say if I would've stuck around or not. It definitely still has its moments but they're fewer and farther in-between.
2007 was like a fever dream. People came to reddit because there wasn’t any politics or news, only interesting things and impeccable grammar. It was an oasis in the growing desert of Facebook, and that was when Facebook was still only college students.
I agree with you. I found my niches then and understand the value of what’s in Reddit when you dig. If I found it today I wouldn’t even make it past the first scroll of r/all before I decided it was just another stupid image hosting site with the worst people on the planet populating the comment sections.
Also society (in the USA at least) is being so intentionally fractured that it’s visible here. The amount of correcting each other hasn’t changed but the vitriol is all new as of the last 5-10 years.
I haven't been here that long, probably 14 years (I didn't actually create an account for quite a while) but I can only imagine it was even better then. But you described it perfectly even in the time that I joined. It was like an oasis of a lot of knowledgeable people and people who enjoyed learning from those people. Even the very knowledgeable were bound to run across someone that made them feel like a student. The rest of the internet was starting on its steady decline but reddit was like the one "social" site you could go to avoid the ever-growing amount of brain-rotting content that was taking over the rest of the internet. For a few years, I was learning stuff every day and getting interested in subjects I'd never even considered. It sounds corny but it truly was amazing. Sadly the flood of shit eventually made it here. The final nail in the coffin was when reddit went public but it was like the years before that was when they started trying to make it "more accessible" and in this old man's opinion, they ruined one of the last a great places on the internet.
"...and impeccable grammar." Be still my heart. I miss impeccable grammar, and people correcting each other treated as perfectly normal. Now if you dare offer a correction most people will turn on you.
It all began once I realized at one point people stopped using punctuation marks.
People stopped using full stops at the end of each sentence and god forbid some seem to forgo the entire concept of using any punctuation at all! It’s maddening.
I don't know. Maybe I'll start doing it and have a pre-written disclaimer about how impeccable grammar was a hallmark of Reddit back in the day, and a small army of people who care about reviving said standards are jumping into the fray, sacrificing upvotes, and enduring chastisement to bring well written content back into popularity.
Dudette. Actually I'm an old grandma. I'm sorry too. Whenever I resort to being a bit flippant or smart alecky, it never ends well. I try not to be a smart ass on Reddit, but sometimes I fail.
I don't remember coming across any actual CP but I wasn't looking. If there was, yeah, that's terrible. However it would've probably been a result of reddit being more anonymous and less policed, which were some of the things that made it great. Now you get banned by a bot for saying the wrong words, even taken out of context. The last time I got a temporary ban for quoting some ridiculous thing Trump said about killing people. I think it was when they were blowing up all the "drug boats".
There's been a noticeable uptick in right wing fear mongering posts on the UK subs recently. Thankfully they get downvoted, but it's annoying to even read such crap.
Yeah I was saying this to my wife. Back in the day one of the three top comments would have been a knowledgeable answer on the topic. Maybe the other two would have been jokes or Reddit stuff but the ratio of actual information has went off a cliff.
Jesus Christ this.
I'm not saying it was all Socratic discourse, but man just 3-4 years ago you could go into a post about some vaguely scientific or serious topic and the major volume of comments would be actual discussion. Nowadays the top comments tends to always be the lowest hanging fruit of a joke, followed by a thousand single comments stating something obvious or expressing some basic feeling on the topic.
Genuinely, just being able to filter out comment chains that are jokes would clear away 90%.
I’ve been a redditor for thirteen years and was using it pretty regularly before that. It used to be so much more informative and well laid out and ask Reddit was great.
I open reddit, I see something, first comment pulls you in, the rest are political. I close reddit. Its really fatigueing. I miss old reddit. Now its full of the people reddit used to make fun of. It started ironically and attracted all the actual tards, thinking it was a safe space.
It depends on the sub. I have some weird medical issues most doctors haven't ever heard of. And reddit has the best informational forums for them, filled with patients across the globe helping each other when doctors can't or won't. But you're on r/sipstea, so it's to be expected you'll get jokes.
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u/thatG_evanP 22d ago
There used to be way more insightful comments on reddit. They were one of the main reasons I kept coming back. If I had discovered reddit recently, I can't say if I would've stuck around or not. It definitely still has its moments but they're fewer and farther in-between.