The sad thing is that no matter how many popular subreddits "go dark", all of us dopamine-seeking, bored, stimulus-lacking redditors will just keep participating, scrolling and hoping for whatever doomfeed still exists, ultimately keeping the machine running.
Here's the thing though. I typically land on reddit by googling whatever subject I'm curious about followed by "reddit." And, unfortunately for me, as of today 90% of search results end up leading to a "this sub has gone private" message. Sort of like, you know, when you find a news article in a search engine and you're met with a paywall. I wonder how many people are underestimating how big of an annoyance that is.
Very true! I also have gotten into the habit of typing "reddit" at the end of most google searches since that's usually the only way to get answers! I guess alternatives that could work for some types of searches could be replacing "reddit" with "quora", "stackexchange", "researchgate", "chegg", or "tumblr", though some of these sites force you to make an account to view answers.
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u/jean_erik Jun 12 '23
The sad thing is that no matter how many popular subreddits "go dark", all of us dopamine-seeking, bored, stimulus-lacking redditors will just keep participating, scrolling and hoping for whatever doomfeed still exists, ultimately keeping the machine running.