I feel as if it's an apples-to-oranges situation. Whenever I see Reddit mentioned, I see a popular opinion of "that site is terrible." Isn't Reddit just what you make of it? I use it for the things I can't discuss on Hubski, like sports and local stuff. I don't know where the hate comes from.
I don't just eat at one restaurant, why would I visit just one website? There's room for all of them and different places satisfy different needs. Many Hubskiers are redditors and both sites satisfy different things for them. Right now, Hubski is pretty small, so trying to get really granular, regional information isn't all that doable. For example, if I follow #Detroit on Hubski, I'll get some random posts, but nothing as abundant as /r/Detroit. Both sites have value, imo. I use reddit more to go find some info on a topic. I use Hubski to be a part of a community that I'm likely to interact with on an ongoing basis.
This is sort of my view on it. Hubski is good for talking to people, but it seems to be "talk about things that 18-25 year old American liberals would be interested in." It's pretty heavy sometimes. I agree with you on the interaction bit, though. I'm never going to move out of lurking on Reddit.
It is an apples-to-oranges situation. They are two different websites. I still totally fucking hate Reddit, though. Yeah, it's what you make of it, but I shouldn't have to spend 2 hours filtering the crap out of a website. It should just be, you know, NOT garbage. Without the filtering, Reddit is a racist, sexist, repetitive, circlejerky, completely un-unique regurgitation of the same shit in a giant echo-chamber. WITH the filtering, Reddit is a repetitive, circlejerky, completely un-unique regurgitation of the same shit in a giant echo-chamber. So, again - Hubski and Reddit are not the same. But Reddit, for the most part, still sucks. Also, kleinbl00, since you've been on Reddit (and Planet Earth, HAH), longer than I have and probably have a more nuanced opinion.
When reddit was young I was the top submitter for /r/comicbooks. It was kinda neat but there was no one to talk to. Now there are multiple comic book subreddits and a bunch of people to geek out with who also know who Hoppy the Marvel Bunny is. It's pretty awesome if you have such a granular topic. Even /r/NFL, not exactly an esoteric interest, is a great community of shared interest. Askscience and AskHistorians are also great. The main, default subreddits are basically 4chan though. It's an image board. And one where the users think they're experts on all manner of things even though most of them can't rent a car.
See, it helps when you look at it the same way you'd look at Twitter. You follow what you like, and avoid what you don't. It doesn't help that it gives you a default following, though. My problem with Hubski is that there are so few people using it, that there isn't a wide range of topics discussed here. If Hubski suddenly had a football, hockey, and polandball fanbase I would never leave.
Context matters. Reddit began as a small, insular community of erudite geeks. It continued that way for a few years, flourishing into a large, insular community of erudite geeks. However, Reddit is engineered first and foremost for hit-and-run pageviews and low-effort content so once it hit a critical mass, it magnified and proliferated hit-and-run pageviews and low-effort content. So when you say "I like Reddit just fine, you just have to look at it like you'd look at Twitter" you're effectively saying "there's nothing wrong with LFTB so long as you think of it like spam or bologna." You're not wrong. But you're also not convincing people who miss their steak. The fact that you've never eaten a cow that hasn't been through a blender doesn't make you morally superior, it makes you naive.
Let's pretend you have a clear mountain spring. The water is delicious and refreshing. You tell all your friends. Now you have a popular clear mountain spring. The water is delicious and refreshing. Your friends tell all their friends. Now you have a poppin' clear mountain spring. The water is clear. Your friends' friends tell their friends who tell their friends who tell their friends. Now you have the Ganges River. Yes, "filter what you see" and it's still water. But we didn't have to filter it before you came along. Thus, the insult: you aren't asking a question, you're picking a fight. Every response you get you come back with a rejoinder. It's not like we've been exactly mute on the subject and if you wanted to learn, rather than box, it would have been simple. There's a deeply-seated disappointment in Reddit around here. When you question it repeatedly, without listening to the answers, some of it will rub off on you.
Okay, sure. What you say is probably correct. Woop-dee-doo. Your excellent debating skills have won the day. My favorite part was the bit where you called me naive and ignorant. No wait, my favorite part was the bit where you take a question and turn it into a horrible plan to poison the discussion. You started the argument, you motherfucker. What did I do? What the fuck did I do this time? I'm going to log out now. I'm going to log out, and then I'm going to go to bed. After I go to bed, I'm going to go to sleep. When I wake up, I'm going to have breakfast, shower, brush my teeth, and check Hubski again. There will be, I assume, some brilliant response waiting for me in my inbox that will reveal all of life's greatest truths. One of these truths is that I can't talk to people on here. I can't succeed in talking to people on this website. I'm going to post that game I wanted to run on here, but I'm going to avoid talking about anything else. I'm tired of being picked apart, I'm tired of being insulted, I'm tired of defending myself. If the game falls through, too, I'm going back to being a lurker. I'm sick of this.
Rhetorical skill permits one to win an argument when one does not have the facts. I mod a default. It's the fifth or sixth I've modded. I've been bestof'd something over 100 times and I haven't done much more than modding since 2011. My trophy case says "load more trophies." I was nominated Redditor of the year in 2008, 2009 and 2010. Gifts on my behalf have paid for nearly a week of Reddit server time and Reddit's first podcast is partly about me. Facts. I haz them. Here's rhetorical skill: I'm sorry I offended you. I think you didn't mean to come across as offensive. I reckon you rarely do. However, based on your response (and previous responses to others - this is a small site), you come across as offensive by mistake with disquieting regularity. Here's why we like Hubski better: - On Reddit, all you ever get is a downvote. On Hubski, you get a discussion. - On Reddit, you're a never-seen-before username. On Hubski, you're a precocious-but-prickly homeschooler that I still choose to talk to. - On Reddit, there's no context to anything. On Hubski, I've watched you trip over your own caltrops so many times that when you took "naive" in an insulting way, even though I didn't mean it that way, it was easier to lance the boil and let you vent. Feel better? 'cuz here's the thing: Hubski is not a site where you only get to talk to people you agree with. Not only that, but the people you disagree with are around a lot. Again, voice of experience: I've got a long-ass mute list. Several people on there I've tried to come to terms with many times. Can you say the same thing about Reddit? Are there people on there that have rubbed you the wrong way for years but you still have to be civil to them for the sake of the general level of discussion? (see, I can, but we all mod defaults. Disagreements at that level make the news. Call me a corner case.) You sound deeply frustrated. I would be, too, if every time I wanted a discussion I got a fight. But think about it for a minute: why do we want to fight you? You came into this completely neutral. You asked what you think is a completely neutral question. With each interaction it became more and more heated until here you are, QQing out in a languorous and verbose fashion. Do your friends out there in the world say things like "Oh, that's just Waterford, he's like that?" 'cuz the world doesn't. The world takes you at face value - 93% of communication is context. Which means what you type is only 7% of what I'd get off of you if we were standing face to face having a chat. So if you have a hard time face-to-face, online's gonna be rugged. Which means - sorry, champ - you're 93% made-up in my head. Everyone is. All of us are one-sip-out-of-a-beercan truth. Once you internalize that, you start to choose your words more carefully. NOBODY started their interactions with you intent on giving you the ratchet. It got there though, didn't it? And we don't really do that much with each other anymore because our 93% has been filled in somewhat by other interactions. We got history. THAT is another reason we like Hubski better. I've seen several people try and steer things back to normal with you. You don't get that on Reddit, either. But there comes a time when you gotta participate in the process, mate. If you can't have a conversation without ending up on the defensive, perhaps your conversational skills need refreshing. There is no aspect of life that won't improve, trust me. Again, sorry to make you blow your top. Sorrier that you're having a hard time understanding why. If you've been reading this only to prove how correct your predictions were, stop. I have no skin in this game and if you left after this you'd be just another in a long line of people who come to Hubski thinking that oversharing is the same thing as empathy so they never really learn how to talk. I'm speaking to you, 7% person to 7% person, in an attempt to uncloud your eyes from the humanity. It's nice here. We get along. When we don't, we rarely call each other motherfuckers. Go or stay. Up to you. Generally when we see someone making dire exclamations they've made their mind up and it's beyond our influence. I don't know how many hours of server time I've burned personally trying to get people to stay. Rest assured there's no reward. Yet I do it anyway. So does everybody else. Because Hubski is better.
Yeah I think I have to agree with kleinbl00 here. I'm not talking about the reddit discussion but the one about why you feel you're constantly picked apart and attacked. On the last two things I posted here, you were the first (and only one) to comment. I mean, cool I like discussion! But while I don't have the skilz to actually understand why something about your responses irked me. I was ready to reply on a very defensive tone but toned it all down considerably. I thought "why am i so bothered?" re-read your comment and didn't find anything to be hostile about so I toned it all down and replied in a friendly manner. I figured it was my insecurities projected on you and you were not to blame that I felt a certain way. We then proceeded to have a perfectly cool interaction. But then I noticed other people misinterpreting your comments in other threads too. I don't have any specific advice and I'm sure you don't mean to but there is just something in the way you say things that puts people on the defensive. Conversations get heated from that point on. You're very intelligent tho and I hope you stick around. Just... I don't know, try to be a bit less.... eh... arrogant? Nah, that's not the word I'm looking for but something along those lines. Does that happen to you outside Hubski?
Tag me when you do run that game, I'll participate if I've got time :)
This is the question that got me to respond after this long. I've thought enough about what I'm going to say in response, and it isn't getting anywhere. No matter. I've been looking over my past comments. Is the word you're looking for "aggressive?" That's the vibe I'm getting from myself. I don't mean it, but I can see it. And there is no other place, offline or online that gets me the kind of reactions I get here. I'm trying to think about what I say here a few times before I write it, so bear with me. I don't know what's different here compared to other websites. I don't speak any differently here than I do anywhere else. It's confusing to me when I get negative reactions to things I don't think are offensive. I'm certainly a large part of the problem (acting like a dick on purpose does not help the issue of being perceived as one), but I don't know how to change the way I talk and act. I'm bad at long posts. I was going to remain silent and lurk after my original post, but after thinking about it I realized that it would probably come across as whining. This is as much as I can get straight in my head right now. Tomorrow I might tackle the mountain that is the other response. I've certainly read it enough times to get a grip on it. Hopefully this isn't beating a dead horse.Does that happen to you outside Hubski?
Hey Waterford, I badged kb's reply because it was an amalgam of points that he made to me several years ago, and seeing them being made again, not in the exact same way but still as articulately, brought me back. But I don't want it to seem like a snub against you, like there's this hubski squad that's ganging up on you and we pat each other on the back and give each other these "badges" and high-fives and are super smug about all of it. I realized that unless I added a reply, my badge lacked context and could be very naturally assumed to be a kind of congratulation at your expense. It's not. What it is is that I see something in kb's response that I think is very important. It's a bit of a call to action. To do something really, really hard. To look at yourself. To be able to recognize and make sense of what you see and then think on it and even maybe act on it. I know that a lot of goodness comes from being able to listen to others and find the truth in what they're saying, even if they seem a bit cuntish or rude. It's a skill so hard though that even with the patience of a dozen zen monks people spend their lives never getting good at it. To be able to look at a pattern of reactions in other people and maybe draw a similar thread about yourself, and then use that thread to inform future behavior. What kb did was try very empathically to get you to look at yourself -- you, who is a total stranger to him, a username on a website. Most people won't ever give you the time of day. Fewer people would do it with any modicum of thought for your feelings or wellbeing. And this might sound super mushy, but I'm sending you super good vibes over the internet right now.
Reddit is full of casual racism, sexism, and general xenophobia. The content isn't funny, and the same things get boosted every time they're posted, which really does make it an echo chamber. I agree with eightbitsamurai wholeheartedly. Also, the average reddit user is completely insufferable, since even when they hold reasonable views, they will never, ever, ever just shut the fuck up about them. Look at their atheist, gaming, and political communities if you don't believe me. This is coming from someone who used to use reddit, but got sick of it. You can use reddit and be a good person, there's still plenty of good content, and I definitely won't judge you if you use it...but I got sick of it after so many years.
I just kind of had this thought while perusing the comments here: When you start reddit, you get "everything", or at least a vast majority of what they think you will like based on community size and activity. After that, you have to both add other streams and filter out what you DON'T want. Hubski skips the vast majority of this by starting you with a relatively clean slate. Unless you follow that person, or that tag, odds are you won't see it. In theory, this how reddit is designed to work, but in practice most people talk about having to filter out what they don't want. {edit: to add to this analogy, often the top-level subreddit in a category is still not what you want. you may need to go down several layers of specificity to get to the kind of content and conversation you want to see. Every time you add a stream of content, you have to filter it to your desired level.} Reddit is like bottled water, where you filter out what you don't want. Hubski is like not-from-concentrate orange juice: everything's been removed, and you add in only what is to your taste. maybe i just perceive it that way because i've been here for a year, but I think i've hit the filter button twice? maybe three times. all websites spamming their own low-content crap. {edit: but then, aren't we describing Eternal September in a nutshell? the general degradation of content and discourse as more users are introduced? Regardless of the intentions of hubski's dream team, if this place were inundated repeatedly with new people at 1 50th of the level that reddit gets every day, the culture here would be gone very quickly. Subreddits probably saved reddit in a lot of ways, but they really only delayed the inevitable slide that is mass discourse. wow. that got dark. Sorry evybubby}
frankly, it's because it's not a great analogy, because it requires you to know a fair bit about not-from-concentrate orange juice. To transport NFC juice, they have to take out all of the essential oils, etc. that will spoil in transport. Meaning, if you drank orange juice from the tanker truck, it wouldn't taste like much. Once it gets to wherever it's being bottled, they add all those essences, oils, etc back. With me so far? The cool/interesting thing about this, and sort of the thing that makes the analogy, is that these companies will modify what oils and essences they put back in to suit
the tastes of that geographic area. Maybe Northern US cities prefer a sweeter orange juice, where in western Canada they prefer a more tangy orange juice. They can modify their mix to suit. Interestingly, this came up in the news again just a few days ago and I didn't even know until i went looking for sources. So the analogy makes sense, but only if you know about this one specific thing about NFC orange juice. That makes it probably a bad analogy.