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[Cutty Flam]

I always wrongly viewed it as something like 4chan all this time. I thought it was like some kind of highly toxic underground nerdy demon dungeon of sorts where a bunch of warped minds or idiots gathered to discuss anything under the sun

Was pleasantly surprised to see I was wrong. And that there was really good conversation and discussion going on. I would love to make an account and start joining in on those discussions. It’s fairly amazing, one huge forum where the internet at large can discuss things in depth and the threads will last years with constant flowing conversation. It’s brilliant

But how did this start and grow so immensely? How did almost everyone come to accept it as ‘the’ place to discuss anything and everything? I’ll be honest, the layout to me is still confusing. And I don’t know what a subreddit is entirely. But the layout I always thought was very odd and for me it kept me away from even checking it out a little bit

 

[chixdiggit]

The layout really does stink. I mostly go to Reddit for stuff that does not get a ton of traffic so it's easier to follow.

 

[DKehoe]

You can find a subreddit for pretty much any interest you have. So it's kinda cool to be able to have all these hubs in one single place. It’s ultimately a bunch of communities, so it’s hard to have a single definitive statement about it.

 

[Majukun]

But how did this start and grow so immensely? How did almost everyone come to accept it as ‘the’ place to discuss anything and everything? I’ll be honest, the layout to me is still confusing. And I don’t know what a subreddit is entirely. But the layout I always thought was very odd and for me it kept me away from even checking it out a little bit

it grew so much beause it's formula works.
the internt is a big place and find interesting or relevant stuff is becoming more and more difficult. So the idea of an hub where stuff gets filtered and categorized is great.
About your question, a subreddit basically is a reddit that is centered around a specific argument, everyone can start one and everyone can join..this together with the normal system that put more relevant stuff in the foreground and makes less popular stuff fall down into obscurity helps reddit having a bit for anyone..if you are just looking for relevant news, interesting stuff or just photos of cute kittens you can get on the main homw and the more popular stuff is there for you, if instead you are into some obscure stuff you can just enter your local subreddit and find like-minded users to talk about your love for garden gnomes or something.

layout can be better, that's why many apps on smartphones or scripts on browser do just that

 

[Radical Dreamer]

Upvote/downvote system is bullshit.

 

[Paasei]

The layout prevents me from using it. So aside from that I don't have an opinion on it, really.

From what I've seen of my very minimal use, it just seems like one out of the many forums/boards where people are suddenly an expert on everything.

But again, just to make sure I've been clear enough, I never used it more than 20 - 30min a year back or so.

 

[flibbertyjibbert]

can't stand it.

a dedicated forum of any given topic is always miles better than the subreddit

Shitty unfunny memes are most of the content. People don't post anything negative thanks to the upvote system. Leftie thought police run all the political discussions with an iron fist.

 

[xrnzaaas]

I lurk and occassionaly post on a few small subreddits like stealth games or horror gaming, but the mainstream ones are for most part pure cancer.

Upvote/downvote system is bullshit.

My "favorite" one is ps4, they have a small army of trolls that downvote EVERYTHING new. It's down to pure luck if your post will break through.

 

[Papa]

Astroturfed cancer

Aaron Swartz didn’t kill himself and Ellen “Chairman” Pao was a CCP plant

 

[Grinchy]

It is 20% good and 80% shit. Let's say you have some really specific technical problem, for example. You're likely to find it by googling it with reddit as a keyword.

But everything else about it sucks. When people make threads, they post an image with a title. If it requires any description whatsoever, the OP can post in their own thread with that description. But, it's never going to be the post at the top of the page. The first 10, highest rated posts are dedicated to horrible puns. There's nothing Reddit normies love more than overused jokes.

There's no such thing as good discourse because of this. And, let's be real - it's absolutely infested with SJW mind virus types. You'd better have the exact opinion that is common on twitter, or you are downvoted immediately. There are exceptions, like if you go to a specific subreddit that is built just to have "bad" opinions, but once they get too prominent, the entire subreddit gets quarantined and/or banned completely.

 

[eot]

The redesign is shit, I use the old layout (the new mobile browser version is also garbage and just wants to force you to use their app).

Large subreddits are almost pointless to visit, you will mostly see the same stuff reposted over and over. It's hard to have discussions because the site is fragmented into communities within which most people agree with each other. The up/down-voting system discourages discussion even more, and the nested structure of comment replies makes it hard to have them (if a post is a day old and you want to see new replies to old comment chains, you have to manually look for them, nobody does that). The way I'd describe reddit is formulaic and predictable, you can go there expecting something and be sure to find it. You can also expect to, from time to time, be downvoted to oblivion for saying things you know are 100% (maybe you happen to be an expert), because reddit.

Good for cat gifs and that kind of thing. I mostly use it for a few small subs, and some science subs.

r/coronavirus was a good example of how useless the site is once a subreddit grows beyond a certain size. Initially it was a good resource for current news and discussion, then it hit a threshold where you start seeing three reposts of the same thing on the front page, you come back 18 hours later and it's still the same shit there, mostly stuff that has low relevance but is easy to upvote without actually clicking the link.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Garbage website with paper-thin community.

Case in point: I was once a semi-regular Redditor on the main tea subforum. Tea. Y'know, the beverage. And even though this was a few years before the 2016 election, the tea forum was getting cranky, elitist, and politically calcified.

If Reddit can take a mundane topic like tea and make it political, something is messed up.

 

[lock2k]

Fappit

 

[OmegaSupreme]

As I've said before its good for tits. It has a few good communities. r/battlestations for pc gaming setups. But yeah mostly for tits.

 

[triplestation]

you can find good stuff in reddit but navigation/design is awkward

 

[TNT Sheep]

You can find a subreddit for pretty much any interest you have. So it's kinda cool to be able to have all these hubs in one single place.

I think this is the main appeal. I have occassionally used it for travel advice and impressions/opinions. Sometimes, you just have to wade through the reposts and crap to find what you are looking for. For actual discussion, yeah subreddits often lead to echo chambers. So, you always have to keep that in mind.

 

[V2Tommy]

Worst popular website on the internet. A playground for know-it-all neckbeard trolls and normies alike.

 

[Scotty W]

I have been on Reddit for over 10 years. I have grown to hate it immensely, but I can still tell that there is some love under that hate.

I moved to NeoGaf about a year ago, because a community is so much better than what Reddit has to offer. It is rare that I encounter the same user twice, so everything has an ephemeral, drive by quality. At least here, even our joke users have some concern for their reputations. Somehow, this leads to better quality conversations about most things. Of course, there are sometimes mindblowingly deep posts over there on obscure topics, but you have to find them in a mountain of pseudo experts. With regard to memes and cat gifs, there is tons of stuff, but having so much of it devalues it in a way, similar to how you value a song less on Spotify than one of the few vinyls or cds you had way back in the day.

Back in the day it seemed like their was free discussion, but the whole thing is grossly overcharged. I have been banned from some of the subreddits for the tiniest infractions. The echo chamber on Reddit is appalling.

By all means, find some cool subreddits and enjoy- but there is no hope for the board in general. It is slowly sinking.

 

[ManaByte]

Reddit is just 4Chan with money behind it.

You think that account means it’s not anonymous? It’s the same disposable anonymity that’s on 4Chan. Reddit is nothing but burner accounts astroturfing.

The only difference to 4Chan is the subreddits have mods who can ban sources of info they don’t like to force the discussion to their own bias and push the sources they do support.

The site is absolute garbage and a cancer on the internet.

 

[Codswallop_]

Most subs are censorship heavy, and something like half of the top 200 biggest are controlled by five "power moderators" that curate the front page content. You can still find niche places to discuss things, but the upvote/downvote system only encourages groupthink and inevitably turns larger subs to shit. It used to be great, these days it's mainly political propaganda and corporate shilling

 

[EviLore]

 

[OmegaSupreme]

The Jordan Peterson subreddit is an unfortunate shitshow. There are some good posts and good discussion but its mostly overrun with far-left trolling shitheels.

 

[ManaByte]

The Jordan Peterson subreddit is an unfortunate shitshow. There are some good posts and good discussion but its mostly overrun with far-left trolling shitheels.

Another example is the big Marvel Studios subreddit. It has 1 million subs, and many of the mods are friends with one guy who runs a blog. So his blog posts are allowed on the sub, while other blogs are automatically deleted as to not compete with their friend. A lot of other subs are like that, and it's similar to Reee where the chosen mods are allowed to shape and censor the sub to fit their own biases.

 

[J-Roderton]

Hate it.

 

[StormCell]

Was pleasantly surprised to see I was wrong. And that there was really good conversation and discussion going on. I would love to make an account and start joining in on those discussions. It’s fairly amazing, one huge forum where the internet at large can discuss things in depth and the threads will last years with constant flowing conversation. It’s brilliant

No, actually, it's the death of the message board. Have you noticed how most forums have gone away and haven't been replaced by new ones? I don't like Reddit. It doesn't have the personality that the ol' forums do/did. I rarely find any in-depth discussion happening there. Worst of all, I can't fathom how somebody decided to build, basically, a message forum to host all of the internet's boards, and the internet was stupid enough to accommodate this.

Let's talk about what Reddit really is. It's a mega platform. It's a centralized place, a hub, where all these unrelated subreddits interconnect. It's just like Facebook and how our personal pages link together through the hub that makes us all searchable and friendable and stuff. It's the centralized-ness of this type of platform that renders it vulnerable to censorship and strict moderation. Apart from the evil corporation thing that Reddit has become, the site wouldn't be all that bad, except that it did aid in killing forums. And I also don't like that whole profile exists across all these unrelated sites type-of-thing. It's gross and nasty like using your FB account to log in everywhere else on the internet--like, only if you want to drag your stink everywhere you visit.

Also, we really didn't need a Reddit to help us find boards. We had search engines. Search engines were pretty good about finding sites and forums. I have never felt a need to search and find Reddit and then search and find the board relating to my particular interest. It's too bad Reddit won't suddenly give up the ghost and the internet will suddenly turn interesting again.

 

[nush]

You can't actually have a discussion there. Maybe if you find a small enough sub with active users but anything popular there's just too many responses and if you don't post as soon as the topic is posted forget about any interaction if you are not in the most upvoted comment.

It's really impersonal.

 

[ManaByte]

 

[teezzy]

I enjoy Reddit., but admittedly stick to my niche interests on the site: favorite bands, hockey, self improvement, and old consoles nobody else wants to talk about anymore.

Beyond that, I dont explore the site much. It's actually pretty chill.

 

[Stilton Disco]

I alwyas think of the internet as being like the oceans.

Most people only ever stick in the warm safe shallows, mostly congregating on a few popular beaches everyone goes to. Amazon, google, social media, pornhub (Ibiza 18-30 holidays) and streaming sites.

Some maybe venture into open waters, if they're particularly enthusiastic. Forums, specialist shops and so forth.

Most of it you can't really see. If you had specialist equipment you could tell it's full of life and activity, but almost no one has the time and patience to look into it unless they're super weird. The deep web.

Then you've got the sea bed, where everything eventually ends up sinking down to, destined to rot in the darkness, while blind, monstrous scavengers pick it clean, before turning on each other. That's Reddit.

 

[Super Mario]

Come back to me when one community ever has anything good to say about another community. Sure Reddit has its flaws. I've found it to be one of the more tolerable places I've been though.

In all honesty, (new) GAF has been fairly reasonable. Old GAF was a step above 4chan.

 

[JareBear: Remastered]

I like that there is a sub for almost everything. You can find a community to chat with about pretty much any game or hobby you're interested in.

Sure, there are some weird corners of Reddit, but that's just the internet

 

[EverydayBeast]

Reddit prides them self on being BIG they try to out headline you, there may be something GAF could take from them, I find some beautiful threads on there, personally.

 

[ThatStupidLion]

typically the only time i reddit, is if im linked to a relevant thread. for instance if i google a question or someone links a funny thread. its fine for the minimal amount i use it. i dont interact with it at all other than read, so for information its pretty good

 

[Mr Nash]

Some of the really niche subs are alright. Most of it is a dumpster fire with people who spend too much time posting there. My general rule is that a person's worth as a human being is directly inverse to their karma score on Reddit.

 

[Moogle11]

Hard to have an overall opinion as it’s just essentially a collection of forums. I have some subreddits I really enjoy, but the larger ones with a ton of traffic tend to suck. Just like busy forums, the more internet dwellers you have the more trolls and assholes you have ruining the place for others.

I also don’t like the upvote/downvote system or sorting by hot posts etc. I generally only participate in subreddits snd threads that are smaller and slower that I can sort by new and use basically the same as forums like this one.

 

[Windle Poons]

It’s up its own arse. Like that other forum.

 

[belmarduk]

Its the best forum on the entire internet. GAF is second.

 

[SpiceRacz]

I visit /r/mma and that's about it. The front page is usually littered with "orange man bad" shit. Which I don't have a strong opinion on, but it's every god damn day.

 

[haxan7]

Haven't posted on it too much myself. I have a tendency to know exactly what I need to post to get myself immediately downvoted into oblivion.

 

[TheMan]

I didn't like reddit at first but it has grown on me a lot. I felt a lot better about using the site after they purged the more problematic bullshit like subreddits that purposefully sexualized children (legally, apparently) and the outright child porn/child death subreddits.

However, I'll say it's not perfect- some subreddits have inconsistent moderation. I've been singled out for posting "clickbait" articles even though the same article went on to be posted again less than an hour later and generated decent discussion. But on the whole I like having access to niche communities and plenty of porn under one umbrella.

 

[Moogle11]

I’ll add that I do agree that a lot of subreddits have less interaction and debates than traditional forums, but that’s fine by me. I wasted too much time arguing with randos online in my younger and dumber days. Now I mostly just like to give my two cents here and there and move on from a topic. In years of online debates I don’t think I ever had my mind changed nor changed anyone’s mind. Myself and others just mostly like to hear ourselves talk and that’s just a waste of them and energy to do more than diplomatically state your opinion and leaving it for others to take or leave.

The only sustained engagement I enjoy is things like game OTs or game-specific subreddits thst are mostly people playing and enjoying a game chatting about it, asking and answering questions etc.

But the main appeal is just having very specific subreddits. I prefer thar to forums with a few catchall areas like this ome. Too many threads about things you don’t care a out to wade through to find ones of interest. Along with not wanting to use my work email a big reason I never joined GAF way back was I preferred forums like Cheapassgamer or DVD Talk or Bluray.com that had a ton of specific forum areas and a lot of traffic. Unfortunately traffic died off over the years.

 

[godhandiscen]

Reddit is full of fake accounts pushing political and corporate agendas. Be cautious.

Exactly.

 

[diffusionx]

It's one of the worst sites on the internet, has insufferable groupthink that makes every subreddit the same (I've thought of doing a TTSM metric for subreddits - Time To SpongeBob Meme), encourages the worst AKSHULLY posters to rise to the top, and it's all covered with the worst high school girl catty snark.

 

[Fbh]

I never really used it much.
Since there's a subreddit for almost everything there's definitely a lot of info there and I've occasionally used it when looking for something specific.

But I find the layout horrible and absolutely hate how hard they try to push their app on mobile

 

[BigBooper]

I browse it a lot, but it's pretty crappy. People will downvote for no reason at all. It's impossible to get any kind of conversation going. That said, it has so many users that it is a pretty good news aggregator.

Oh and the memes and joke posts are pure bottom of the barrel scum. Here let me say the first word of a song and each post after only say one word. So fun...

 

[Nymphae]

It's a cancerous trash heap, but the autists there can answer a question for just about any random thing you might ask about a particular niche interest, so use the resource when you need it and then get the fuck out of there.

 

[Kadayi]

I use it for tracking some stuff, but I'm not really participating in it actively, as a member. It's a little too ephemeral for my tastes as far as platforms go .

 

[zeorhymer]

A lot of mods there are shit.

 

[Moogle11]

But I find the layout horrible and absolutely hate how hard they try to push their app on mobile

I really like the app. I rarely browse Reddit on a PC since I find the browser version so much uglier and clunkier than the app. To be fair, I do most of my forum posting from mobile too though. I try not to waste time at my pc or laptop on social media/forums and just use those for work.

 

[Fbh]

I really like the app. I rarely browse Reddit on a PC since I find the browser version so much uglier and clunkier than the app. To be fair, I do most of my forum posting from mobile too though. I try not to waste time at my pc or laptop on social media/forums and just use those for work.

I don't doubt the app is good.
But as someone who just doesn't use reddit very often I don't feel like installing their app on my device, and being bombared with "do you want to download the fucking app?!?!?!?!?!?!?" messages and pop ups after every other button press on their site is annoying as hell