You really have to be selective. Moderation is all over the place, bots and racists (racist bots?) are in many subreddits, but there are still some great subreddits.
Reddit is huge. You can find echo chambers for whatever echo you are hoping to hear.
There are over 1 million subreddits. Think of if this board had 1 million categories instead of just 14. If you can’t find anything of value, you are doing it wrong.
It’s like saying… I went to a grocery store to get food for the week, and when I got to the parking lot outside the store I looked around and only found cigarette butts, food wrappers, soda cans, and one old shoe. I don’t know how people think you can make a decent meal with any of that.
I’ve tried reading random pages from books in my local library and it doesn’t make much sense to me. Is it on the level or corrupted?
Reddit really, really shines when it comes to niche hobbies. I can’t tell you how many houseplant subs I read, or “what’s this bug/bird/tree” type subs. Have an obscure Youtube channel you like? There’s a sub to keep you updated. These places are very often amazingly positive.
It can also be the worlds weirdest cesspool. I spend too much time on subs that aggregate misogyny, which I am sure skews my perspective on the culture. One observation I hear it that the deal with the internet age isn’t so much that we can find our bubble, because we were always in bubbles, but that we can now find other bubbles too. It’s seeing other bubbles that really radicalizes you. It can also be weird in this way that some fairly radical position will be normalized and become accepted wisdom very quickly. I left puppy101 when people were discussing how best to wipe your dog’s feet after a walk and the hivemind was 100% convinced that everyone did this and anyone who didn’t was probably abusing their dog and had a floor coated in a thin layer of poop from outdoors.
It’s a mixed bag when it comes to information. If I am looking for a product or service, I take a Reddit discussion more seriously than anything else on the internet, but still with a grain of salt. College Admissions and AP exams are interests of mine, and often kids will report out stuff on Reddit that I couldn’t find out any other way, or it would be a long time before I did. But nothing can be taken at face value, and there’s always a danger of forgetting it.
And if we are having a contest, my current main is 173,607. I like to argue.
The thing about Reddit that cracks me up is the karma thing. I can make a comment that really nails it. Perfect, hilarious, whatever. And I end up with +1. Then I can make a silly comment that blows up and gets +11k.
The one that gets me is when you write something on-topic and useful, the OP replies to thank you, and someone downvotes them for it,
Oh, and the random downvotes that become a pile-on of downvotes.
Or when many people make the identical reply and every reply gets upvoted except the fourth reply (?) which gets downvoted just because.
TIL that the down arrow doesn’t take you to the next post…
But what entertainment it is!
I love that stuff (but then, a friend got me watching Bridezillas). If you like hearing about dysfunctional families/roommates/friends but Reddit’s too unwieldy, Bored Panda swipes the best of those AITA threads, pares them down and presents them in a more bite-size, organized format.
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eta: If Reddit is too free-for-all for you, might I suggest a better-moderated message board? (Riding herd on the jerks is one thing that makes this place stand out.)
Each subreddit really has its own culture and moderation, so it really runs the gamut from “absolutely avoid” to “this is one of my favorite online hangouts.” The mainpage seems to lean towards the former. My Reddit tip: whenever I stumble across a subreddit I haven’t encountered before, I usually sort by “top” in the last year to get a feel for the community.
Echoing what others have said, Reddit really shines when it comes to smaller interests. There’s subreddits about practically any hobby you can think of, subreddits full of cute animal pics, possibly a subreddit for the city you live in, depending on how big it is. There’s even r/FindAReddit, where people help you find a subreddit that meets your interests!
You know how every so often you read a question on the SDMB that someone answers with some very specific inside information and the OP says “this is why I love the Dope”? This happens on Reddit all day every day because there’s so many questions and so many people. SO many people.
I totally agree with everyone here who is saying that un-filtered Reddit is trash. I did keep a lot of the “default” subs on my join list from when I joined (like I dunno, maybe r/books?) but then removed a lot and added a bunch of my own.
I had to turn off recommendations because I am in the Cleveland and Akron subs so Reddit seems to think I want to see random posts from every other city in the US. Turning off recomendations generally made things quieter.
I’m a 15-year account holder but only something like a 4-year participator. I admit I was confused about how Reddit worked for many years as well. I like the current design because I don’t know any better.
@garygnu we ran into each other there before don’t we?
Yeah, I remember running into you.
My account is close to 17 years. (Glad I picked it over Digg back in 2007.) Not every UI design change had been great over the years, but the mobile app works pretty well.
Man, if I had a mobile app for any kind of social media, I’d never get anything done.
And I certainly dare not access The Dope from my phone… I’d waste even more time than I do now. Now when I think of something I tell myself “Okay, if this is still bothering me when I get home and hit the SDMB, I’ll check that thread…”