Reddit is a Window Into the American Nightmare
theamericanconservative.com/articles/reddit-i...
theamericanconservative.comPosted Jan 28, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC
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theamericanconservative.comSome of this article comes across very much like "It's a banana, how much could it cost? $10?"
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What you are doing is driving down the information superhighway into the places where today’s other half lives. You used to have to walk to the poor side of town
Sheesh
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Here’s some money. Go see a star war
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Maybe some. But I thought it was worth reading. We all complain about politicians and the elite being out of touch. The article was aimed at them, along with other comfortable middle-class people. It pointed out that Reddit was a view of US society as it is, rather than what people see in their daily lives at the office etc
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It’s from American Conservative magazine, the sensible shoes and high necked Talbots readership. This is not saying anything positive about Reddit, which is a collective consciousness of creativity, all the good, all the bad... it’s real life. Not all of it, billions missing, but a good collective of reality for a lot of people.
American Conservative, Let’s Not Meet
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I don't get what his point is. Is he trying to explain reddit to a conservative audience?
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I think so - I married into Falwell evangelicals-22 years into that window of crazy. This is the language they speak, this article reduces (insert any platform here) to whatever criticism they want. This is what they do for a living. Judge. I love my inlaws. But they make it a challenge.
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He's trying to explain "the American nightmare"-- the unending, all encompassing struggles and precarity--that a lot of people face to people that don't experience it.
It is rather eye-opening for someone like me, who grew up securely in the New Jersey exurbs and who now owns a home in Northern Virginia, to read about the sorts of things that go on in the lives of people with a little less money or security.
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No, he's describing how using reddit gives him insight into how some people live their lives, via stories in subs such as r/AITA, r/JUSTNOMIL, r/raisedbynarcissists, r/ChoosingBeggars, etc. Those stories are about people who are not functioning well in today's sociopolitical climate, and he likens some of this behavior on display to mental illnesses such as depression or eating disorders.
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He's incredibly sheltered and insulated, writing for an audience that I surmise must also be incredibly sheltered and insulated.
Remember the parable of the blind people describing an elephant to each other?
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But at least he is having a look down from his Ivory tower and seeing problems real people have..even if that's just on here
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Except for the whole (paraphrased) "their choices resulted in this."
I didn't know I could choose a ten figure trust fund birth. That is totally my bad. Boy is the egg on my face red.
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Yes agreed, nice assessment.
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I get the feeling the writer is just one broken neuron away from pointing to a cashier and telling his kid "Stay in school or this is you."
Depending on the school he went to, he may not have even known anyone that worked their way through school, or just simply also had a job while enrolled.
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Indeed. As I read, the word that kept coming to mind was cloistered. It's funny given his ilk refers to people with terms like fly over country and coastal elites. It's almost as if he's observing deplorables or something.
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The author's point seems to be that because Reddit contains unfiltered stories written by Americans about their day to day experiences it can reveal interesting insights into how people experience life in America. And for people that are financially comfortable much of this will be eye opening.
What I thought was interesting is that an article on a conservative site seems to be warming to the idea, however weakly, that maybe we can address "social ills" and make society better by addressing basic needs.
In the end, the overarching question of how to divide the blame between individuals and the system might be besides the point. The Right will argue that too much social policy amounts to rewarding and incentivizing problematic behavior. The Left will counter that food, housing, healthcare, and a modicum of stability and security should not be rewards for people who manage to prove their virtue while drowning. Both perspectives are in some measure correct, but as the social ills pile up, understanding their metaphysics seems less and less urgent.
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“Make society better by addressing basic needs” aka give away more of your money or go to jail
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Yes, IRS, this comment right here.
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Could you make any of that money without a society in which to live? No man is an island.
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Gloomy, but interesting. While some in the discussion below the article argue that the "nightmare" aspects of American society visible in the individual stories which appear in reddit threads are common to all societies, the author argues in the article suggests that they are more peculiar to American society and "the geographically uneven nature of the post-2008 recovery."
The end of the article is sobering, too, in that so much of what we see in reddit threads could happen to any of us: "A Reddit thread, but for the grace of God, go us all."
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FYI: Reddit is a bunch of 16-year-olds pretending to be in college.
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I'd wager it's also a lot of 40 year olds that never grew up, have extreme Dunning-Kruger effect, and are resentful at the world and everyone that doesn't recognize why they're right about everything all the time and deserve to be rich.
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Nah, these days it's legitimately what the other guy said, both literally and mentally. This place is has been just another 9gag/Facebook/imgur/Tumblr for years now. Just look at how utterly stupid and generic the average comment is, and the sheer amount of meme subs. This is what happens when a site spends 6+ years watering down everything and attracting social network users just to get advertising money.
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Nah, these days it's legitimately what the other guy said, both literally and mentally. This place is has been just another 9gag/Facebook/imgur/Tumblr for years now. Just look at how utterly stupid and generic the average comment is, and the sheer amount of meme subs. This is what happens when a site spends 6+ years watering down everything and attracting social network users just to get advertising money.
The system of reddit allows the 16-year olds to coexist with the 40-year olds though. Why does it have either this or that. And thats the whole point.
As for how stupid and generic the average comment is, just look at american politics and deduce the attention span of the average voter, no doubt this reflects on reddit as well.
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I wonder if linking to the wikipedia page for Dunning-Kruger effect is itself a manifestation of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
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You can find all the same pathos on other people's Facebook pages.
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But not if you aren't friends with them. He's not critiquing reddit he's explaining how it revealed the struggles that other people face (i.e. the American nightmare).
It is rather eye-opening for someone like me, who grew up securely in the New Jersey exurbs and who now owns a home in Northern Virginia, to read about the sorts of things that go on in the lives of people with a little less money or security.
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It IS a window. A distorted, limited, self-reinforcing window with filters for particular wavelengths (salacious stuff is always visible; nuanced stuff is generally buried) and a certain amount of influence (mostly negative, probs) on the scene it illuminates, but still...
It lets us see and hear about ourselves in a different way than professional reporting or an unmoderated blog.
If we don't like what we see, it's important not to just critique the medium (which is ok to do), but to also reflect on the things about ourselves and our society and culture that contribute to the way that we interact within the forum.
However, OP is wrong about it only showing how bad everything is.
Dude takes a very dim view of society, characterizing it as a "nightmare" and focusing on the desperate and absurd.
He just as easily could have highlighted the moments of kindness and empathy, and that would also have been cherry-picking and incomplete.
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I think it's partly also the author trying to razz up his article. It won't sell well if the title was Reddit contains some bad stuff and some good stuff.
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No wonder he emphasizes the bad, he comes from the premisse that theres stuff wrong with society. He openes with the inclusion of the good and goes on to and focuses on the bad
Discussion forums in particular, most especially Reddit, are an endless encyclopedia encompassing all of humanity’s creativity, kindness, brutality, eccentricity, and boredom. Reddit can occasionally inspire, and the right corners of the site can teach you a lot, but it often demonstrates what kind of person you don’t want to be
I find it commendable that such an article comes from "the conservative", and that the lack of healthcare and economic security of the "other half" are reprenseted there at all. Its refreshing reading a conservative piece that doesnt pretend that all is good under trump, or outright blames Obama. On the other hand, that thats enough to impress me is a pathetic display of how the bar has been lowered in itself.
Its telling, however, that the author keeps lamenting the horrible situation and the display of symptoms on social media, without once asking the question of how we got there. He takes the easy way out in saying that its besides the point to divide the blame between individuals and the system.
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Reddit has millions of users. This includes loonies. Their stories tend to drift to the top, since they're less boring. Not quite unlike TV, social media or pretty much any other media.
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A balanced view. How refreshing- I’m so used to only reading highly partisan articles, one that is nuanced and interesting is a surprise. Is this actually a conservative site? Hard to tell these days
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So, reddit is good and bad. What's the point of this article?
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Making sure no pearl goes unclutched.
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It really depends on the sub in my opinion.
There are some subs that are outright toxic and others that are pretty decent. It's the classic YMMV sort of situation.
I am a fan of many TAC articles, but I would argue that this one paints an overly broad brush. Like any publication, there are articles that I would disagree with.
Edit:
I should mention that the author does seem to acknowledge some of this and makes a few good points, but on the whole, I"ve found Reddit a far better experience than say, Twitter. Again, it really comes down to the sub, with each sub having different communities, different demographics, etc.
Might be slightly anecdotal, but after 4 accounts and 10 years here I have seen some dynamic shifts. Most of them saw noticeable changes, but the transition period prior to the launch of "new reddit" a couple years back when they completely changed all the default subs has changed the default site into something I feel like is worse than facebook.
Discovering reddit is one thing, but the only way I was able to curate a sub list is stumbling through the defaults and weeding out the spammy, non-informative, low effort, shit post ridden default subs that served as nothing more than karma farms and echo chambers. That seems difficult to do now if you were new here.
The US political climate has obviously played as a factor, but I can't imagine being someone who is new to reddit right now. I visit r/all frequently, still pop into r/gaming, r/funny and r/politics sometimes, but only because it's a reaffirmation that those subs went the way of facebook.
Don't really know where I was going with this, but it's been on my mind. I know there is confirmation bias and rose tinted glasses in my brain, but after a decade here, I think I can objectively say the last 3 years have seen a steep decline in this sites objective in welcoming and promoting people into smaller subs and seems now focused on pushing the most low-brow bullshit.
I miss the days when there was a reddit.com. not a sub. I mean early subs were nice for niche stuff but the fun was randomly going from crazy memes to interesting tech articles to indie games all one the same page. I still enjoy Reddit obviously since I'm here, bit have a pretty curated list of subs I follow and avoid most of the default subs. But that does reduce the frequency of stumbling on some interesting topic you wouldn't have even know to follow.
I enjoy meta subs for this fix. r/bestof, r/depthhub, r/subredditdrama are good places to start.
subredditdrama fuckin sucks man!
r/mistyfront
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I am curious how much of this was intentional or orchestrated versus organic. I'm sure it's a little of both; as anything gets popular, it gets watered down to minimally appeal to the widest userbase possible, see many TV sitcoms. But this is like a fishing bobber on a lake, just barely above the surface of being intolerable, with no real room for novelty.
Navel-gazing aside and actually coming to my point, my point is I think reddit's growth is responsible for reddit's inanity and switch from depth to shallowness. I urge you to spend 15 minutes and look at https://www.reddit.com/controversial/, skipping over the politics posts. Or alternatively https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/controversial/. I cannot express how idiotically unimaginative these posts are. How dull and pedestrian. The issue is we have a bell curve of a LOT of boring people posting and upvoting a LOT of boring posts, with mods overwhelmed and flooded with a wave of gray garbage being spewed out by the mouths of a million dullards. Plus moderators can't really filter out the trash streaming down the river, as the sniveling accusations of mod abuse or powertripping then start to drone out everything else in existence.
So yeah, uh, people bad. Imma stop posting awful mixed metaphors and go back to lurking.
The site owners have emphasized the potential for Reddit to be profitable in the last decade, chasing new user capture and retention and visual/social content over everything else. They didn't set out to reduce quality, but a decline happens automatically when you take your eye off quality and put it on other metrics. Sadly.
General reddit shifted heavily towards that sort of garbage with the Digg exodus of 2010.
I'd tend to agree that the redesign was chasing the usage, not causing it.
I didn't think the article is a critique of Reddit in any way. The "American nightmare" is a thing in the real world, made up of social ills as he calls them. Reddit is simply a window to something that's otherwise difficult to find in one place.
There's probably much worse to be said about Twitter where bad ideas are regularly amplified, but I didn't think that came up either.
I don't think the author is commenting on whether reddit itself is good or bad. He is just saying that some of the subs are a way to see the underbelly of the US that are otherwise not exposed to the average middle class person.
It's pretty clear that most of these comments and upvotes are from people who didn't even bother to click the article. The author's actual point (window into the underbelly of society) is very obvious early on.
He's not really criticising Reddit. He's using reddit posts as a window into US lives. It's actually a good well-balanced article from a conservative source. I was surprised I enjoyed it
Yeah, well what encouragement do you have for anyone feeling alienated by a self-described "conservative" publication who publishes anything with the subtitle, "The degeneration is worse than you think?"
Yeah. I was pleased to see something from TAC with upvotes, but then I read it. :/
Folks generalize. A lot. Social media makes it easier for folks outside the norm to find one another and seem bigger than they are, but they're still outside the norm and small. And even within the norm, it's heterogeneous.
I spend time on Twitter because it's a space where high profile persons engage with one another and the public. I can talk with journalists, writers, scientists, etc. Though mostly, I just get to read their back and forth. In so many ways, Twitter is garbage, but it also allows you to sit at a conversation table that you otherwise can't.
So Reddit is toxic, Twitter is toxic, the Next New Hot Thing is toxic, but in other ways they aren't.