this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2023
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I had never even heard about the Boston Bombings till now (or I don't remember it, not an American), but damn, that whole situation got all kinds of messed up. I can understand wanting the perpetrators being brought to justice, but slandering random people who bear a minor resemblance to a suspect makes no sense to me.
Out of curiosity, how should the admins have reacted the witch-hunts in your opinion? I've never really used the old frontpage or r/popular so I'm not very familiar with how their usage would be affected tbh.
I don’t think they reacted incorrectly tbh. The thing of it was that this was one of the first times it became “mainstream” and was mentioned in MSM on the likes of CNN. So it brought an influx of users, more so than past surges. This overall the culture changed quite a lot.
Prior you could use Reddit as a news source. In fact MSM was using stuff trending there to “break” news to larger audiences. They did similar with Boston…and got it wrong.
Overall once that happened it shined a spotlight on the site. And some of the unsavory subreddits were reported on. But more importantly witch hunts became MUCH more prevalent. Anyone feeling slighted would try and engage Reddit to harass people. And more and more joined.
There were times where this happened before. It happened to a user named Saydrah in the earlier days who was a mod of some subreddit. But it was much more prevalent and frankly dangerous. Instead of sending pizzas to a house it was all night harassment and death threats.
So the admins started curating the main page. Making sure the likes of creepshots subreddits werent there. Or super emergent news wasn’t there, because the Chris Dorner thing didn’t help either. Overall it just changed the culture from one of a series of communities to something a bit more…risky.
Hell I have had people that disagreed with my stances around that time. Thankfully I practiced some basic opsec, but they certainly harassed some poor person thinking it was me. It’s made me very cagey about being online and frankly being honest with my opinions that may be less….mainstream.
Thank you for sharing :)
I guess it's easy to get sucked in the whole "I'm anonymous so I can do what I want without repercussions" thing and just become downright nasty towards people you don't agree with (for some people at least). Ironically, at the same time you'll quickly be downvoted into oblivion if your opinion is a little controversial. I'm sorry to hear you (and the stranger they thought was you for that matter) were on the receiving end of it. It's something I certainly won't miss from some subs...
But hey, I'm a pacifist by nature and prefer knowing why people think things rather than just telling them their opinions are wrong. So what do I know :')
Haha. Yeah. I’m not a pacifist, but I wish war wasn’t a thing. And I don’t judge people for a single belief in most cases.
People are complex. How they arrive at an opinion or outlook is complex. I for one feel we can agree to disagree or have different outlooks and still be cordial or even friends.
I’m friends with people that lean in many political ways. I can generally separate one’s politics from the person they are.
I wish more were able to debate without resorting to reductionism, or straight insults or extreme labels and yelling.
If you can’t talk to your enemies or those you disagree with, you drive them away and dehumanize them.
Couldn't have said it better myself! Anywho, hope you have a nice day :)