I think it's less about one subreddit and more about the articulate expression of a feeling that has been gnawing at many of us for some time. I've loved Reddit for years, and before that I enjoyed smaller forums. They all had some problems, but generally provided a place for intelligent, unfiltered discussion. It's the same thing I used to love about online gaming. The internet was like the Wild West and a Parisian cafe and an 18th century British coffee house rolled into one. The relative lack of regulation and standards along with minimal corporatization made it a wonderful place to expand your mind and engage with other human beings. But as days go by and larger sites suck up more and more of the user base, the Internet is starting to feel more like a shopping mall. Reddit felt like a holdover from the "old" days for a long time, but it (literally) got bought out, and it's starting to show. Some of the great posts now and then maintained the illusion that it was still a great community, a place where you could really interact and benefit from it. I guess what today's post did for me was shatter the illusion I'd sort of desperately been holding onto, the idea that I could get back that feeling from years ago.
When thinking about the internet in general now vs. say, like 5 or so years ago, I'm always reminded of that scene in Pirates of the Caribbean where Cutler Beckett remarks that the world is smaller and there's less room for pirates now, that the pirates are a dying breed. Not that the internet is smaller...it just seems like it's being more sanitized I guess? Rather than being a sea of individual, anonymous-focused sites, people tend to cluster around the big sites. I think. I'm rambling. There just seems less place for anonymity on the internet. It's all commercial- get rid of offense, get rid of antagonism, make everything palatable to the general public instead of the small group of awkward tech-savvy people. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
Yeah, I feel like reddit is like Starbucks in the 90's. First it was very local and mostly unheard of, then you start hearing about this cool place but it kinda feels exclusive. Then you see it in a few big cities, maybe while looking over someone's shoulder, but then before you know it there's 3 in Hicksville and that's their main demographic.