this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023
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Reddit was something unique and personal to each user. Some it was new, some it was the only place to find specific tech or other advice that wasn't corrupted by ads and algorithms on goggle and other big corporations.
Reddit was my way of disengaging from world news before I knew about anxiety, and how things could affect me and become personal even though I had no way to help world events. So I used it to personalize my mental diet, if I was creative I could sub to many craft subs like leather or metal etc, it's where I went to get other perspectives on movies and content that I didn't fully understand.
End of the day, is all that possible still on Reddit, kinda, but it's going away, and they pushed me personally to leave as I could see it was becoming google/Facebook, ad algorithms to push what people pay for or get paid for. So time to reset.
Become involved, I'm way more involved and adding to discussions on the new sites I'm on. Everyone adding comments and posts and perspectives and opinions are building this up from bottom up.
You are the future, make your perspective part of the future by helping guide these new sites to something we can be proud of.
@Bendersmember
@Hondolor
I’m upvoting your comment because you bring up great points, but I personally disagree with the disengaging from world events aspect. I’ll miss the niche subreddits that helped you solve the most random of issues, but I think reddit was far from a great place to disengage from news and the political discourse brought by news. Ever since the 2016 election cycle, I personally saw a considerable increase of posts regarding politics that came from both established subreddits and new ones that popped up (like /r/enoughtrumpspam which simply added more spam to the pile).
I think Trump’s campaign and presidency really ignited a lot of this, and while I neither like nor support Trump, I miss when the biggest disruptions were from isolated events (like the Occupy Wall Street movement or the Ellen Pao fiasco) rather than 4 years of a presidential tenure.
After years of nonsense, it all just got tiring. You can curate your reddit experience, but what happens when all the political doom scrolling finds its way into your favorite subreddits?
Kbin and the rest of the fediverse will grow, and I’m aware that the same kind of posting will find its way here, too. Thankfully the fediverse lets you subscribe to multiple communities of the same name, so maybe /m/news isn’t up one’s alley but /c/news is, for example.
I didn’t realize how shit reddit was getting until I stopped using it. The constant barrage of political shit accompanied by low effort comments/puns did a number on my happiness. I stopped using Facebook for similar reasons.
I’m glad you’re also adopting the mindset of being an active contributor. For years I also just would scroll and seldom upvote, but if we want to make “this house a home”, we need to put in the effort ourselves! I look forward to seeing how this all plays out. So far, I am very optimistic. I hope you find your niche interested here sooner than later!
Some of it was also political activists or people paid to actively work to sway opinion on social media.
"Some" is a huge understatement.
I'm not much into US politics, but you know, this reminds me of why I started disengaging from my own country subreddit. At the start it was mostly about the people and the community, and I liked talking to people and hearing their problems. I was hosting regular get-togethers and eventually became a mod. As Reddit got more mainstreatm, the anti-government political people started coming in and well, I don't want to be hearing about moaning all the time. These people also had a terrible persucation complex (not helped by my country's history of surpressing opposition views), so any attempt to moderate these people when their posts and comments got excessive and off-topic was met with fierce pushback. I just wanted a more positive place for people, instead of endless political bickering.
Until I got to the part about your country's history of suppressing opposition, I thought you were talking about my country's subreddit!
We went through the exact same trajectory from being a small friendly place with meetups, getting bigger, becoming negative and political arguments all the time. In the end I stopped dropping in there at all.
Yea, it's a shame. Thinking about it now though, maybe should've created a separate sub to dump those political posts to.
Might have worked. They created one for my country, and also we could filter out politics on the main sub, but some people still just bring it up in other threads.
I always stuck with front page and never was on popular or all, I feel that was my saving grace. Also reposts and crossposted content drove me batty, so overtime unsubbed from groups that got political or negative. I wasn't subbing to just kitty cat pictures, more so hobbies, movies, and specific YouTubers like rlm etc. That's why I mentioned that everyone's experience was different, just a few different subs and the whole experience is different.
I'm in a demographic that people actively try to push and radicalize as well, so even if I am frustrated with things and how they affect me, I always keep one foot out and try to be super aware of that. I feel some, not all obviously get caught up over time and it erodes who they are and normalizes some really crazy things. So when I realize something like American politics is affecting me and my day, as a Canadian, I step back and look at what I'm letting into my mental diet.
End of day I hope we all learn from the past and can improve on what worked and avoid what didn't. There's no reason to not learn from the past and try to grow in a positive way.
Well said @Bendermember
While I feel a bit nostalgic to leave Reddit behind, I recently realised it had become stale for me. Time to move on.
Absolutely this. It got very homogenized. I joined reddit for the variety of people and their ability to understand topics I'd like to understand better. Then it all turned to bots and reposts. Then I would unsub from one subreddit and migrate to the new sub that was similar to the sub I just abandoned until the new sub became infested with bots and reposts, then rinse and repeat.
This is a great answer.
I feel like I can do away with the doomscrolling and time-wasting, but it's the specific advice and hobby subs that will be difficult to tear away from completely.
I'm also going to have trouble avoiding my city's local subreddit. It's definitely a hub for everything going on here, and I've made some real life friends on there who I plan on keeping up with.
What I liked about reddit was its "googleability". You had a question and found an answer without reading through an endless article that winds it's way through rephrasing your question 5 times, adds extensive biographies of everyone mentioned, the wider history of the problem and the author's grandmother, all to pad the article and have you scroll through more adds.
But now there's ChatGPT, so most of my "googling" can be done that way, and I don't have to scroll through walls of puns or "this is the way" or "thanks for the gold, kind stranger", or "take my updoot and get out". I wonder how much of that bullshit were bots, anyway.