![]() Because the reddit community has become an attractive target for trolls, and as such has had its trust and generosity taken advantage of over and over again over the last few years by everyone from casual attention-seeking liars to professional con-men to the point it's basically lost all semblance of trust or desire to give people the benefit of the doubt, and.At this stage even if the claimant provides proof the momentum is too large, and typically the lynch-mob will merely pick holes and rip it to shreds and hold it up as further "evidence" of the fraud whether or not there are any legitimate holes to pick in the first place.Īt this point mere insinuation, complete fabrications or simple ignorance on the part of the mob are considered as good as facts, and the poster is downvoted, PMed, harassed, and sometimes even doxed and stalked in real life. Then others also start jumping on the bandwagon, and even if the claimant is legitimate the conspiracy theory quickly becomes self-reinforcing and self-sustaining due to simple repetition and groupthink. The problem is that in their haste (and typically lacking much in the way of intelligence or insight) they tended to take the stereotypical "conspiracy theorist" approach - latching onto any possible discrepancy, missing information or simple misunderstanding on their part, and loudly trumpeting this as "proof" of the claimant's fraudulent nature. Increasingly, however, people saw that this was also a way to distinguish themselves and look and feel clever compared to the rest of reddit, and as soon as a claim was posted more and more people with less and less actual analytical ability started falling over themselves to debunk it. When the first few fakers were outed it was often due to some clever detective-work, and the people doing it were lauded for their insight, analysis and the community largely reacted proportionately to it. Now we see someone faking cancer every few weeks, and the community is sick of it.Īt the same time as the number of attention-seeking assholes have increased, the community has also become diluted. Initially it happened only occasionally, and nobody cared overly much when it did, but as the community grew exponentially, the potential audience and the number of fuckwits wanting to exploit them skyrocketed. These trolls and attention-seekers realised that an easy way to get attention or upvotes (and sometimes even actual donations or money) or to bolster their egos by manipulating lots of other people was to post fake claims and sob-stories. And as the site grew it began to attract attention-seekers and karma-whores and trolls. Then the site grew, and the community got diluted. We know exactly why - reddit used to be a fairly trusting place with a default expectation of honesty and integrity, and people could post a lot of stuff without being expected to verify or prove it. Why do you think reddit generally takes such a guilty until proven innocent approach? (Also sorry this is so long, I may have taken too much ritalin.) ![]() Perhaps not as immediately gratifying as calling people names but it's more likely to improve user experiences in the long run. I don't see how that helps anyone.įor that reason I'd say implementing restrictions in subreddits not specifically catered to memes is a better course of action than attacking the individuals involved. Making me feel bad about this won't stop the behaviour it just makes my day a little bit worse. Stupid, yes, but it's an unavoidable feature of my brain wiring that I tend to forget things easily. ![]() In that state even something I saw ten minutes ago might make me laugh like an idiot. Personally I have severe ADHD which gives me the attention span of a five year old when unmedicated. There are far better and more strictly-moderated subs out there, after all.Īlso, not all of us find repetitive jokes offensive or even unfunny. Their overall trends may contribute to a certain "degradation" of parts of the site, but if you're seriously dependent on AskReddit or WorldNews for anything like meaningful discourse then I would say you're just about in the same boat as the poor meme-slingers in terms of life fulfilment. Maybe they're stoned or high or having a bad day. So they like dumb stuff, who cares? Ignore it and move on. ![]() Perhaps it's just because I relied so heavily on reddit as a facsimile of social acceptance when I was severely depressed, but I really don't like seeing users belittled so aggressively. There may be more going on in their lives that makes even those small, empty interactions invaluable to their mental wellbeing. Is it their fault that this is their only form of validation? I mean I doubt anyone would consciously choose reddit, of all places, to be their sole source of human contact. Also calling them "sad bastards" is unnecessarily mean. But that's making a lot of assumptions about people that to me seem unfair.
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