Reddit culture (and lemmy by extension) changed so much in a short time. Just a few years ago you weren’t downvoted just because someone disagreed with your opinion. The polarization and culture war turned reddit users completely dogmatic and as immune to arguments or facts as magats.
The same is true of lemmy. Most users prefer to defederate from socialist instances because “tankies”. Which really shows how right wing “limbrols” have become. They hate socialists with a different viewpoint on US empire more than they hate fascists. The fascists have succeeded in utterly destroying reddit and lemmy as a platform for useful political discourse.
We now have the vast majority of “liberals” on lemmy upvoting comments using racist slang terms for Russians to dehumanize them, just like they did for enemies in Japan, Vietnam or Korea. The fascists have made massive inroads.
The OP meme almost seems quaint to me now. The real culture war is elsewhere now.
Vote. If you think something contributes to conversation, upvote it. If you think it does not contribute to the subreddit it is posted in or is off-topic in a particular community, downvote it.
This used to be understood that people often treated it as agree/disagree but that you are “supposed to be better than that”. And that made a difference.
Btw, this article seems to perfectly describe the effects you are mentioning, e.g.:
That same attitude contributed to the development of an appallingly toxic and hostile culture online: As more people – many with silently held prejudices – flocked to a place where allegedly nothing mattered, they let themselves loose, flinging typo-ridden bigotry at any target that they could find. While the sentiments were occasionally decried and the writing errors were sometimes corrected, the retort of “It’s the Internet! Nobody cares!” was wielded with nearly constant frequency. There were certainly oases of reasonable and well-composed discourse… but as their populations grew, so did the volume of posts and comments that were offered from positions of apathy and ignorance.
… Before long, accuracy, quality, and correctness became optional requirements, and online audiences learned to expect mostly low-effort content instead of refined assemblages. …We ignore thoughtfully composed “walls of text,” but we electronically applaud memetic image macros and single-sentence references that aren’t inherently entertaining or insightful (yet are somehow still poorly written). When we amplify these things – using our likes, upvotes, retweets, and shares – we encourage the creation of more low-effort content, and in so doing, we send the message that higher-quality offerings are unwelcome and unwanted. That above-mentioned message isn’t necessarily what we intend, but it’s nonetheless what we say: Positive responses of any variety communicate more than just “I like this;” they also serve to mean “other people should see this” and “more of this, please.” The other implication, then, is that things which receive less attention – if only because they would have taken more effort to consume – aren’t as deserving of it. We may even state as much directly, downvoting or dismissing submissions that irritate us by either asking for too much of our time or challenging our expectations. In the end, the unified statement which arises from all of our indirectly expressed preferences is that only low-effort content will be accepted.
It is a fantastic article and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Edit: also it helps explain why this isn’t a problem seen merely with Reddit, but also Twitter/X, Facebook, Threads, and yes Lemmy (+Mbin/Piefed/Sublinks) too - it’s apparently rooted in human nature, thus would require enormous pushback to try to counter, while in contrast monetary profits tend to go along with whatever most easily aligns with our most basal natures. Sex sells, greed moar so, but laziness most of all.
I was there. It was real. You’re not crazy, a lot of us went by a kinda honor code for downvotes. You had to say something very irrelevant for me to downvote.
It was the best of times for internet forums.
Better discussions and the gags were limited and not belched out repeat jokes. Yes there were inside jokes but it wasn’t like broken arms jackdaw molly rancher every damn thread. It got too popular and with that you drew the youtube comment types all trying to get the “funniest meta joke” per thread which translates to “most likes” for people not interested in genuine discussion. Couple that with echo chambers and astroturfing and well, now we’re here.
I really wish we could design systems that allow to come closer to that old ideal again. But maybe that age has simply passed and all of our attitudes have changed forever. For example instead of just voting up or down, you could vote for example “funny” or “contributes” or “misinformation”. Maybe there are even some clever statistical algorithms in the background aiding that. Somehow technology ought to evolve to further good discussion.
Personally I think it’s just a problem that arises when too many people are in the room. Get enough people on board and it starts sliding towards catering to the lowest common denominator
Most users prefer to defederate from socialist instances because “tankies”.
To the degree that people bother to defederate from anything (most users don’t) I would assume its because apologists for Putin and China are about as odious to talk to as MAGAs
Basically any anti-imperialist and anti-US empire critique is stamped as Putin/China apologism and downvoted or outright banned. You don’t even have to be a socialist to be “odious”. And of course the big instances have already defederated from the major socialist instances.
Reddit was very monoculture in the beginning. The neckbeards upvoted each other because they generally agreed on the same opinions. That gets mistaken for adherence to reddiquette.
It became a rhetorical tool to prove whatever an individuals political or social adversaries are dummies because they don’t use reddit properly in current year unlike some glory day that never existed.
If they really did use reddit back in the day as they claim then all of the self referential satire about reddits pseudo-intellectualism must have gone over their head. It was like the second most popular type of content. Second only to the actual circle jerking.
Not sure what year but the culture definitely changed somewhere around 2008-2016. A big part was trump of course, but before that the rise in android and iphone and becoming more popular to a broader segment of the public (e.g. “boomers”). Before it was tech enthusiasts all on desktop PC. This was also before toxic gamer culture.
If you don’t think it changed you must have trauma induced amnesia.
So you claim that people are too hyperbolic, then jump straight to accusing the person you replied to of brain damage, and this after jumping straight to the assumption that the majority of said problems were due to Boomers finding Reddit, not e.g. Millennials or Gen-Z or Alpha or merely a less technical audience. If you were attempting a joke there, that was not clear - and yes I saw the “e.g.” but you only listed one, so really, this seems to be the best example that you had to convey? Boomers, who are well known for their toxic gaming culture, I suppose.
As mentioned by others, I for one do not user block instances bc “tankies”, but rather bc they are an enormous waste of time. Although the very meaning of that word could also be phrased as “denier of historically accurate facts”. I for one don’t care if someone is a Boomer or a Millennial or whatever physical age, if they don’t know or care that 1+1=2 and keep insisting that it’s =3 instead, I’m blocking them and moving on with my life. Hopefully they’ll open themselves up to the Truth one day, but I’m not waiting anymore, that’s entirely on them to go at whatever pace and direction they want, including straight backwards if they so choose - but I am not going to entertain the notion that “all directions/facts are equally valid”, they simply aren’t.
Reddit culture (and lemmy by extension) changed so much in a short time. Just a few years ago you weren’t downvoted just because someone disagreed with your opinion. The polarization and culture war turned reddit users completely dogmatic and as immune to arguments or facts as magats.
The same is true of lemmy. Most users prefer to defederate from socialist instances because “tankies”. Which really shows how right wing “limbrols” have become. They hate socialists with a different viewpoint on US empire more than they hate fascists. The fascists have succeeded in utterly destroying reddit and lemmy as a platform for useful political discourse.
We now have the vast majority of “liberals” on lemmy upvoting comments using racist slang terms for Russians to dehumanize them, just like they did for enemies in Japan, Vietnam or Korea. The fascists have made massive inroads.
The OP meme almost seems quaint to me now. The real culture war is elsewhere now.
Yeah, no, “downvote is jot a disagree button” has always been aspirational on reddit.
Upvotes and downvotes have always been glorified agree/disagree buttons.
This is simply incorrect. It’s true that they now evolved completely to that, but you are wrong stating that it was always like this. It’s still in the reddiquette: https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439-Reddiquette
This used to be understood that people often treated it as agree/disagree but that you are “supposed to be better than that”. And that made a difference.
It’s historic revisionism to say it was always like this because clearly there was discussion about this if you go just 10 years back: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/search/?q=downvote
Post from 13 years ago, basically agreeing that everyone ignored the “rule” and used upvote/downvote as glorified agree/disagree buttons:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/s/HAxw7Z9PE4
Excellent references!
Btw, this article seems to perfectly describe the effects you are mentioning, e.g.:
It is a fantastic article and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Edit: also it helps explain why this isn’t a problem seen merely with Reddit, but also Twitter/X, Facebook, Threads, and yes Lemmy (+Mbin/Piefed/Sublinks) too - it’s apparently rooted in human nature, thus would require enormous pushback to try to counter, while in contrast monetary profits tend to go along with whatever most easily aligns with our most basal natures. Sex sells, greed moar so, but laziness most of all.
I was there. It was real. You’re not crazy, a lot of us went by a kinda honor code for downvotes. You had to say something very irrelevant for me to downvote.
It was the best of times for internet forums.
Better discussions and the gags were limited and not belched out repeat jokes. Yes there were inside jokes but it wasn’t like broken arms jackdaw molly rancher every damn thread. It got too popular and with that you drew the youtube comment types all trying to get the “funniest meta joke” per thread which translates to “most likes” for people not interested in genuine discussion. Couple that with echo chambers and astroturfing and well, now we’re here.
Thanks, sometimes it does feel like going crazy!
I really wish we could design systems that allow to come closer to that old ideal again. But maybe that age has simply passed and all of our attitudes have changed forever. For example instead of just voting up or down, you could vote for example “funny” or “contributes” or “misinformation”. Maybe there are even some clever statistical algorithms in the background aiding that. Somehow technology ought to evolve to further good discussion.
Personally I think it’s just a problem that arises when too many people are in the room. Get enough people on board and it starts sliding towards catering to the lowest common denominator
To the degree that people bother to defederate from anything (most users don’t) I would assume its because apologists for Putin and China are about as odious to talk to as MAGAs
Basically any anti-imperialist and anti-US empire critique is stamped as Putin/China apologism and downvoted or outright banned. You don’t even have to be a socialist to be “odious”. And of course the big instances have already defederated from the major socialist instances.
Lol what? What year did you join Reddit? As someone who’s been there since 2008, I promise you that this is nothing new.
Reddit was very monoculture in the beginning. The neckbeards upvoted each other because they generally agreed on the same opinions. That gets mistaken for adherence to reddiquette.
It became a rhetorical tool to prove whatever an individuals political or social adversaries are dummies because they don’t use reddit properly in current year unlike some glory day that never existed.
If they really did use reddit back in the day as they claim then all of the self referential satire about reddits pseudo-intellectualism must have gone over their head. It was like the second most popular type of content. Second only to the actual circle jerking.
Yeah, I was on Reddit for 13 years and I don’t remember that ever.
Not sure what year but the culture definitely changed somewhere around 2008-2016. A big part was trump of course, but before that the rise in android and iphone and becoming more popular to a broader segment of the public (e.g. “boomers”). Before it was tech enthusiasts all on desktop PC. This was also before toxic gamer culture.
If you don’t think it changed you must have trauma induced amnesia.
So you claim that people are too hyperbolic, then jump straight to accusing the person you replied to of brain damage, and this after jumping straight to the assumption that the majority of said problems were due to Boomers finding Reddit, not e.g. Millennials or Gen-Z or Alpha or merely a less technical audience. If you were attempting a joke there, that was not clear - and yes I saw the “e.g.” but you only listed one, so really, this seems to be the best example that you had to convey? Boomers, who are well known for their toxic gaming culture, I suppose.
As mentioned by others, I for one do not user block instances bc “tankies”, but rather bc they are an enormous waste of time. Although the very meaning of that word could also be phrased as “denier of historically accurate facts”. I for one don’t care if someone is a Boomer or a Millennial or whatever physical age, if they don’t know or care that 1+1=2 and keep insisting that it’s =3 instead, I’m blocking them and moving on with my life. Hopefully they’ll open themselves up to the Truth one day, but I’m not waiting anymore, that’s entirely on them to go at whatever pace and direction they want, including straight backwards if they so choose - but I am not going to entertain the notion that “all directions/facts are equally valid”, they simply aren’t.