Not signing in to reddit is the surest way to experience the online equivalent of a table next to the bathroom.

"table next to the bathroom"

This is a phrase I'm not familiar with. What do you mean?

You have been waiting all week for this occasion. You made a reservation at this great restaurant with someone you are really excited to make a closer connection with. Finally, the moment comes, and you are led to your table.

Unfortunately your table is within 2 meters of the bathroom. Every time the door opens, the bathroom light casts shadows on your silverware and lights the back of your head highlighting the thinness of your hair. This is followed, a few seconds later, as the smell of urinal mints wafts over and mixes with the delicate anise and dark plum notes of your $26 glass of wine.

I guess you have to have been there :|

I'm guessing it's like getting the table next to the bathroom at a restaurant; A second class experience.

Was trying to understand this myself. I guess the table next to the bathroom is the most undesirable location for a table since there are smells/foot traffic/noise? Whether parent meant reddit is the bathroom, or the restaurant, I'm not sure.

Reddit is a restaurant. If you winnow your subscriptions you’ll have the best seat in the house. If you leave the default subscriptions in place but log on your jammed three deep at the bar wanting a classic cocktail but having to settle for a miller lite. If you dont log on you are seated at the table next to the bathroom where a stream of drunk sorority girls and fraternity boys stand in line waiting to piss and yelling woo hoo! Everytime the door opens you get a waft of stench that puts you off your food.

Not always. I don’t go to Reddit.com, I always go to Reddit.com/r/motorcycling, or r/leathercraft, for example. You don’t have to be signed in for that.

Signing in puts you at risk of getting sucked into pointless internet comment arguments though.

Not signing in and curating your subreddit subscriptions all but guarantees you will only be exposed to the most populist content on the site and will never see any of the deep, niche, and interesting stuff on it.

> Signing in puts you at risk of getting sucked into pointless internet comment arguments though.

....says a person signed into HN engaged in pointless internet comment arguments....

I don’t have a problem. I can quit anytime I want

You do not need to sign in the disable the new design, you can just use old.reddit.com.

You go to old.reddit.com There is also a firefox addon that redirects all links to old reddit.

Or with old.reddit.com in the URL. There is probably a browser addon or JS for that.

> Disabling the new design still requires you to be signed in, though.

old.reddit.com works fine when logged out, for me.