Yeah... subs like these are the reason I've recently stopped visiting Reddit after more than a decade. Now that /r/popular includes many subs like these ones, Reddit has become an outrage factory, a karma whoring circus and dystopic popularity contest to get upvoted with the least amount of effort put into one's comment.
Here's the thing. Reddit has had its Eternal September 10 years ago, we need a name for the second phase where it's not just college kids but everybody and their twitter-using grandma start invading a platform, and it descends into complete social media chaos made of outrage, likes, upvotes, politics, and terrible, terrible discourse.
Maybe I'm just too old for that place, but I'm still into funny and/or irreverent content and memes. Reddit ain't it anymore. It's turned into an echo-chamber of idiocracy.
You'll laugh but... Something Awful. Never used it back in the day, but there's something reassuring in memeing and talking about stuff with people in their 30s and 40s in a traditional forum, instead of college teens and astroturfed accounts in a competition of who can get the most karma.
That and a few other hobby specific forums that managed to stay alive until today.
I follow German subreddits because it's good daily practice, and most of them are fun. SchnitzelVerbrechen is my latest discovery.
I specifically block all bullying, outrage porn, look-at-those-idiots subreddits, as well as all US politics. It makes the reddit experience much more pleasant.
For the easy stuff that I might know it's always long-since identified by the time I look at it. The hard stuff is usually either some corroded lump of metal from a magnet fisher that could be anything, or something truly obscure.
Plus it's fairly often enlivened by the answer "It's live ordnance, put it down and call the authorities, no don't try and unscrew that bit, it's the fuse!"
I try to keep it to a minimum, just a general ones about Python, Linux, etc. I've noticed that it is a rabbit hole. If I stay to long on Reddit I lose track of time.
Reddit is trash full with bigotry, nazis, racism and stupidity. I avoid it as much as I can.
It's worse than Facebook.
Since forums no longer seem to be a thing Google likes It's been placing Reddit results on top of search results.
They usually are a waste of time and source of anger to click.
I avoid it. The thought police is very real there. It's an awful place.
> Reddit is trash full with bigotry, nazis, racism and stupidity.
Do you go to political subs and sort by controversial all the time or something? Do you browse using /r/all, /r/popular, or just not logged in?
I spend a lot of time on reddit, and to claim it's full of nazis and racism isn't really true unless you're going out of your way to find it. I'm not denying they exist, but they're just not as common as you make it out to be.
> to claim it's full of nazis and racism isn't really true
Maybe not, but the platform has a history of being sympathetic to extreme right wing / white supremacist causes while censoring leftist voices, reflecting the political views of Steve Huffman aka /u/spez.
There are negative sides of it and also positive sides. I find the more niche communities are genuinely helpful and insightful. A lot of the rest is echo chamber and meme sharing.
For example, subs for specific car models, bike models, locations (cities, towns, etc), homebrewing, will be full of people willing to help or provide information to help others out.
- r/Parenting is very high quality, for all you parents out there
- a bunch of subreddits related to cycling, r/bicycling, r/cycling, r/xbiking, r/MTB, r/bikecommuting, r/bikepacking, r/bicycletouring
- Finance stuff: r/PersonalFinanceCanada, r/leanfire, r/financialindependence
- Photo: r/photography, r/photographs, r/darktable, r/FOSSPhotography, r/CineShots (cool one!)
- Electronics: r/AskElectronics, r/PrintedCircuitBoard, r/Embedded
- "Traditional" engineering (I'm a mech engineer): r/AskEngineers, r/Engineering, r/MechanicalEngineering, r/fea
- r/EatcheapAndHealthy
- r/functionalprint (inspiration for 3d printing stuff I do at work)
- r/HomeImprovement and r/homeowners (newish homeowner, learning a lot)
- r/knots
- No programming or "tech" stuff (except r/nim), I get my fix from HN
I have four for cool images and art, two for funny things, one for discussion oriented subs, one for news, one for stupid edgy memes, and others for minor subs.
I could share a list later. I use each depending of my mood.
What's important for me is avoiding political drama, violence oriented subs or justice subs which have really disturbing content I don't need to see (car violence, street violence etc). It's difficult and requires time to evaluate each sub.
I have already left a sub because the content started to be too violent, for example /r/unexpected
My lists (you can create a multi and add them by pasting several lines)
33 comments
[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 80.8 ms ] threadABoringDystopia AITA artificial badUIbattles bestof bestofcraigslist chemicalreactiongifs chemistry chrome_extensions climate collapse compsci CoolCollections cpp css DadForAMinute datasets datingoverfifty datingoverforty dotnet DrugNerds Economics economy entp FairytaleasFuck Frontend Frugal funny googlehome HermanCainAward HighStrangeness howto javascript KamikazeByWords LateStageCarnism lolcats loljs longevity MakeMeSuffer math MomForAMinute muglife MurderedByWords NewsOfTheStupid node Nootropics nottheonion offbeat opensource papillon peopledyinginside philosophy ProgrammerHumor QAnonCasualties Qult_Headquarters rareinsults reactjs reduxjs religiousfruitcake sciences sex Showerthoughts singularity softwaregore Supplements threejs vegan veganfitness veganrecipes vuejs WatchRedditDie webdev weirddalle WordsWithFriends worldevents worldnews worldpolitics WTF
Yeah... subs like these are the reason I've recently stopped visiting Reddit after more than a decade. Now that /r/popular includes many subs like these ones, Reddit has become an outrage factory, a karma whoring circus and dystopic popularity contest to get upvoted with the least amount of effort put into one's comment.
Here's the thing. Reddit has had its Eternal September 10 years ago, we need a name for the second phase where it's not just college kids but everybody and their twitter-using grandma start invading a platform, and it descends into complete social media chaos made of outrage, likes, upvotes, politics, and terrible, terrible discourse.
Maybe I'm just too old for that place, but I'm still into funny and/or irreverent content and memes. Reddit ain't it anymore. It's turned into an echo-chamber of idiocracy.
/rant
Other than HN, what's your alternative?
That and a few other hobby specific forums that managed to stay alive until today.
reddit.com/r/Alfred
reddit.com/r/AskEngineers
reddit.com/r/AskHistorians
reddit.com/r/assholedesign
reddit.com/r/bouldering
reddit.com/r/BreadTube
reddit.com/r/C_Programming
reddit.com/r/climbing
reddit.com/r/ClimbingCircleJerk
reddit.com/r/Coffee
reddit.com/r/corgi
reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions
reddit.com/r/cycling
reddit.com/r/deemix
reddit.com/r/DistributedSystems
reddit.com/r/dune
reddit.com/r/EngineeringStudents
reddit.com/r/evangelion
reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive
reddit.com/r/ffmpeg
reddit.com/r/firefox
reddit.com/r/france
reddit.com/r/GraphicsProgramming
reddit.com/r/javascript
reddit.com/r/laravel
reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism
reddit.com/r/mac
reddit.com/r/Metal
reddit.com/r/node
reddit.com/r/paris
reddit.com/r/Piracy
reddit.com/r/programming
reddit.com/r/ProtonMail
reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi
reddit.com/r/reactjs
reddit.com/r/recruitinghell
reddit.com/r/ReverseEngineering
reddit.com/r/RunningShoeGeeks
reddit.com/r/scuba
reddit.com/r/selfhosted
reddit.com/r/ShittyLifeProTips
reddit.com/r/SQL
reddit.com/r/SuccessionTV
reddit.com/r/surdev
reddit.com/r/typescript
reddit.com/r/vegetarian
reddit.com/r/vim
reddit.com/r/webdev
reddit.com/r/WorkReform
reddit.com/r/WTYP
I specifically block all bullying, outrage porn, look-at-those-idiots subreddits, as well as all US politics. It makes the reddit experience much more pleasant.
Other than r/German and r/ich_el I only follow r/Mediathek
For the easy stuff that I might know it's always long-since identified by the time I look at it. The hard stuff is usually either some corroded lump of metal from a magnet fisher that could be anything, or something truly obscure.
Plus it's fairly often enlivened by the answer "It's live ordnance, put it down and call the authorities, no don't try and unscrew that bit, it's the fuse!"
To name a few:
- AskAnAmerican - Interesting to get American and non-American perspectives on things, for good and bad.
- corgi - Self-explanatory.
- Eldenring
- ExperiencedDevs
- news - It's a popular subreddit and therefore filled with lots of crap, but I like to get a birds eye view of what's happening.
- ShitPostCrusaders - Jojo's Bizarre Adventure shitposts
- dadswhodidnotwantpets
- EatSandwiches
- Mid_Century - Furniture and art
- oldmaps - I love antique maps.
- vexillology - I also love flags.
- specializedtools
- UnresolvedMysteries
- WTFaucet - Strange faucets.
- taskmaster - Dedicated to the British panel show
I avoid it. The thought police is very real there. It's an awful place.
Do you go to political subs and sort by controversial all the time or something? Do you browse using /r/all, /r/popular, or just not logged in?
I spend a lot of time on reddit, and to claim it's full of nazis and racism isn't really true unless you're going out of your way to find it. I'm not denying they exist, but they're just not as common as you make it out to be.
Maybe not, but the platform has a history of being sympathetic to extreme right wing / white supremacist causes while censoring leftist voices, reflecting the political views of Steve Huffman aka /u/spez.
For example, subs for specific car models, bike models, locations (cities, towns, etc), homebrewing, will be full of people willing to help or provide information to help others out.
MaliciousCompliance
upliftingnews
animalsbeingbros
humansbeingbros
programminghumor
Awwducational
SympatheticMonsters
pettyrevenge
prorevenge
nuclearrevenge
unclejokes
/r/<CityILiveIn>
/r/<StateILiveIn>
To those who complain that Reddit is garbage. Sure, the front page can be. But you can make your home page what you want it to be.
I have four for cool images and art, two for funny things, one for discussion oriented subs, one for news, one for stupid edgy memes, and others for minor subs.
I could share a list later. I use each depending of my mood.
What's important for me is avoiding political drama, violence oriented subs or justice subs which have really disturbing content I don't need to see (car violence, street violence etc). It's difficult and requires time to evaluate each sub.
I have already left a sub because the content started to be too violent, for example /r/unexpected
My lists (you can create a multi and add them by pasting several lines)
https://pastebin.com/iPAWUzBk