Redditors love weed, atheism, porn, net neutrality, and anything that makes college cheaper (which is why so many of them liked Bernie). They hate feminists, minority activism, SJWs, the poor, immigrants, and Muslims. They have a fascist conception of art due to their STEMlord tendencies (humanities are worthless, postmodernism is degenerate). They seem more split on war and empire, but you definitely better respect the troops (and cops).
R/Politics rules because it’s basically The_Donald for centrist liberals, except instead of Pizzagate and Qanon they maniacally obsess over Russiagate, and they love the CIA and FBI and respectable Republicans like McCain, the Bushes, and Reagan. That might be a pretty good representation of the current state of American liberalism.
Gamergate and guys like Sargon of Akkad identify as liberal, or “classical liberals.” If you hang around some of those communities I mentioned in my first post you’ll see people saying they’re liberals but the Democrats went too far left or a woman with pink hair told them to check their privilege or something. Few people identify as reactionary.
Those would be the politically-oriented subreddits, right?
I’ve been enjoying the ones on cats, dogs, my fave TV shows, recipes, makeup, the town where I live, and stuff like that. I also look at breaking news. But I’ll stick to the political discussions here–known quantity.
I believe you hang out on some really strangely conservative subreddits, tbh. I mean Hell, even the NASCAR subreddit leans moderate (I’m not kidding - generally really far-right posts get downvoted to oblivion and people complain about how far-right the sport tends to portray itself with pre-race prayers and everything ‘troops’ and the such). The tech subreddits and soccer subreddits I’m on are very pro-immigrant, Muslim, poor, etc (you may expect that for the soccer ones though).
And I believe your definition of /r/politics seemingly flies counter to what you believe reddit is like - the political subreddit is overflowing with centrist liberals.
I have an account there, and poke around every so often, but the threaded nature of the posts just throws me off, and I’ve never gotten used to it, so I only visit these days if a google search leads me to it or if I have a specific question that they have a subreddit for. My brain just can’t handle the layout.
I think you’re right about weed, porn, and net neutrality but politically I think your view of Reddit is tinted through the subreddits you subscribe to. Generalizing Reddit is like generalizing Gmail, there are tons of subscribers and tons of viewpoints. Check out:
I hang out in /r/libertarian, and libertarian posts are downvoted all the time. I’m not sure that up- and downvotes count for much on any particular sub.
I agree that it went from mostly pro-Bernie stuff to more anti-Trump stuff. It wasn’t even limited to political subreddits.
But that’s entirely expected. The crossover happened after Bernie had clearly lost. So of course those people are going to switch to Clinton. And, since they are reluctant supporters, most of those people are going to gravitate towards anti-Trump stuff, though some will say pro-Clinton stuff, or at least upvote it when it appears.
Then there was also the /r/The_Donald subreddit which was brigading the site. They were getting larger and larger, as Trump became more popular, and it was leaking all over the site. And there’s nothing Reddit hates more than brigading.
Then there’s just how much closer Trump was getting. He was even ahead by poll predictions at these points. People who hadn’t made up their mind are more likely to do so as things get closer. It’s just how elections work.
Finally, there’s the fact that Reddit is still that way. I hardly ever encounter pro-Trump Redditors, and, when I do, they tend to be downvoted. Calls to ban /r/The_Donald along with the other toxic subreddits that were already removed get upvoted into the thousands. But Clinton’s campaign is over, and there’s little reason for companies to keep on pushing this anymore. It makes sense, since the majority of the country is anti-Trump: see his favorability poll numbers. Especially in the demographics that use Reddit: Trump support skews older.
There are some ad-like posts that I think may be astroturfed (mostly in /r/videos). And I acknowledge it’s not that hard to get a Reddit post to take off. But citing the change from pro-Trump to anti-Bernie is about the weakest proof you could come possibly come up with.
It’s entirely what I would expect. It even happened here, to a lesser degree: pro-Bernie posts dropped while anti-Trump posts were taking over so much people wanted a separate forum for them.
Thought I would mention something that it took me a little while to figure out about using reddit:
When you see an interesting thread title with a thumbnail picture, if you hover around just below the lower-right corner of the picture, an icon of the forward-pointing triangle will appear. If you click on this, it will open the picture (or video) in the same window you’re in so you stay on the page. If instead you click on the thread title, it will open the thread in a new separate window. I recently discovered that this even works with jokes.
One of my favorite things about reddit is the “Ask Science” subreddit. I see many, many very good questions, much like the good questions we get here.
Another thing I really love is the occasional thread where people ask for others’ best stories about (whatever.) Eerie happenings. Teachers’ stories. How you met your spouse.
Something must be going on at Reddit. After allowing Shareblue to spam the Politics subreddit for months, the mods suddenly announced they have banned ShareBlue from the politics subreddit. It’s not really clear why, because it was openly understood that they were doing this for months.
Those who are interested can dig into the copious drama this has caused starting here:
I like the subreddits where people post pictures and videos of cute puppies and kittens. Especially the one called “tucked in kitties,” which shows, you guessed it, cats tucked into various beds. I’m a simple woman.
I hang out at a lot of the culinary-related subreddits as well as a few dog-related ones. What I’m finding out, especially with the former, is how culturally diverse the participants are. Somebody asks a question, and the answers tend to be quite dependent as to where one lives. I love learning cultural tidbits and such. I’ve never had that much exposure anywhere else online.
I’m also amazed at the depth and breadth of some of the posters there. It reminds me of General Questions or the old Dope books back in the Usenet era.
For me, it’s not so much a place to hang out to be social as it is an information-about-nearly-everything flea market. It’s easy to pick and choose what interests you.