But it's not asking too much of that same cat-and-meme based system to be a focusing point for decently written short-stories and a good place to discuss books?
I mean, you're saying that it's asking too much of people that they just click 'unsubscribe' on twox - and that having the barest understanding of how subreddits work is just too much.
And that's the community you're complaining about your seeming inability to farm quality prose from? I'm as tired of stories ending in the "tree-fiddy" in-joke as you are, but maybe there needs to be a higher barrier to entry than 'spends time on reddit' for voting, and while 'is able to read a couple dozen default sub rules' isn't that much higher, it might encourage people to at least read the rules before spouting off.
Reddit's management simply has an economic incentive to promote these gems to defaults to draw in users and make the site more attractive to those unwilling to dig down, but in the end this hurts those subreddits. I suspect this will be reddit's downfall. It curates some grass-roots communities that are self-managed, watches them grow, and then throws them to the wolves of Joe and Jane CasualAsshole. Now these gems have been thoroughly bro-ified, meme-ified, and politically-correctified with endless arguments web commentators like to get into (religion, politics, accusation of various 'isms', etc).
So yeah, I eat my own dogfood. I know writingprompts will never be good again the same way I know 2X suffers from the same thing with casual visitors. The difference is I know its a symptom of reddit default changes and don't think there's anything here regarding "education" that can fix this. Reddit's need for growth and popularity means decent subs become shitty subs over time. Heck, even when they remove defaults, the damage is done. /r/atheism will never be this philosophical-type sub, it'll always be meme-ish anti-Christian crap. Whatever mindshare they hoped to attract long left, the same way the writers I used to recognize on writingprompts are long gone now.
In other words I blame reddit management, but she blames reddit users. I think those are pretty different takes on the source of those problems. She seems to believe some heavy-handed "reddit 101" is going to fix everything. I believe that is hopeless once you reach the level of a default sub. Shitty users are always there, its how you manage them, compartmentalize them, incentivize them, etc that matters.
Management's economic incentive is purely to get more money from existing sponsors and to get more sponsors - and if they had to close down /r/writingprompts to achieve those ends, it'd happen. Look at how Reddit handled the celebrity nudes leaks were handled.
I think it's a good tradeoff to let these users run free on lax subreddits and moderate heavily on others, provided the moderating tools get better and make it easier on the mods.
If, "In several years, I think reddit could have close to a billion users" then the quality of reddit will be just that. Hell, with a billion users, the average person will not even be fluent in your language. Alternatively it becomes a system where you very explicitly follow people and topics as one would do with Twitter. If so then can reddit be changed radically to accomplish this yet through small enough iterations as to not result in an exodus? There would be the challenge.
For now reddit remains a fairly good newswire for niche topics such as oculus.
The same is very often true of physical social spaces too. How often do you see a new, niche bar later attract a broader crowd and turn into the sort of place that attracts thugs? Or how often alcohol-fuelled violence starts around the larger venues because they attract a less thoughtful crowd?
Perhaps the early arrivals subscribe to the ethos while the late-comers are just there because their base needs are met. In the case of a social site: regular content, people to troll or others to upvote their jokes. In the case of a club: a reliable meat market and cheap drinks.
This seems to be almost universally true for any online community. As a userbase widens, content quality and even social dynamics become diluted to some extent towards a general population baseline.
As a mod of /r/changemyview (153k subscribers), we have discussed opting out of becoming a default sub if we were approached by the reddit admins. We already continuously struggle to maintain sub quality, given 50k subscriber growth in the last 9 months, though we have seen some success with our small set of very well-defined, strict, and heavily enforced rules.
This seems to be almost universally true for any online community. As a userbase widens, content quality and even social dynamics become diluted to some extent towards a general population baseline.
Yes and no. I started spending time over on NeoGAF which has 141K members. Not nearly the size of some larger subs, but pretty good. The quality in content isn't massively scholarly, but it's far less juvenile than Reddit can be. This is largely due to the heavy moderation the forum uses. Which is likely the major flaw in Reddit. It can be a place for "good content" while also trying to be a more open form of discussion.
If an account is new, perhaps it would be worth pestering them with a modal with a "this is the first time you're posting to this sub, have you read the rules for it? Here they are. Oh, and if you're wondering why this is on your page, here's how to remove it: ..".
Part of the reason they've been successful is because the default subreddits draw people in. This isn't about some high and mighty "what is 'proper'", this is about what people find interesting to talk about. The default subreddits are not there to scratch the itch of those like you with their nose in up in the air about "quality".
As much as I like having a deep intellectual conversation, I always like enjoy my memes and inside jokes.
People like you lost that war long ago and as much as you'd like to "predict" the downfall of reddit, all signs point to no, you just fail to understand why. That isn't reddit's failing, it's yours.
> reddit is "doin' it rong!", that's why their projected
> growth is so high
> much as you'd like to "predict" the downfall of reddit,
> all signs point to no
What we're saying is that such low-effort content gets old. Users get bored after a while and want something thoughtful and novel. If reddit does not come up with a way to provide such content (without the constant slide toward the lowest common denominator), it may have trouble holding users.
Also, I've been a part of reddit for 7 years now, and was a part of digg before that. I've watched reddit grown.
about 3-4 years ago, IIRC, there was a rather large bucking back from the "old hands" onto the new because they viewed reddit as the "smart digg". uber great content, blah blah blah. They lost that fight and history has shown that reddit was right (it's still continuing to grow).
The post I was responding to is just another person from that era who is still salty about it. But here's the thing:
A large community cannot give that to you. That's the genius of subreddits. That experience is absolutely on reddit. I enjoy both types of content, and so I enjoy doing either. I think most people do as well.
It's only the pretentious pricks who really have a problem with reddit's lighter content.
loop
You can identify however you want, but if you're truly not sexist, you're a feminist as far as I can tell.
Imagine a Republican telling you that "Republican" is defined as someone who supports natural human rights, and therefore anyone who truly supports natural human rights is a Republican.
The feminist definition of "feminism" is inaccurate for the same reason.
There's an older version of this debate, regarding whether people who don't know or care about a given religion—but happen to follow all its tenets by coincidence—will get into the "good afterlife" of that religion. There are a lot of Christians who argue that to be "Christian" isn't a matter of faith, but rather a matter of acting the way Jesus would have one act. (And thus, in this model, there are atheist Christians.)
Feminism used to be different, it used to be like humanism, now I see it as a tool to tear down white straight men and claim women are superior and deserve special treatment. I didn't always have that view, but after seeing a lot of Feminist groups attacking Hacker News using hoaxes and untrue statements I eventually came to that conclusion. I have never seen Hacker News or YC discriminate against women, and anyone who posts a sexist statement gets downvoted.
I think on 4Chan and Reddit a lot of these sexist men are really boys under 18 who are not mature yet and hide behind an anonymous name to lobby death and rape threats at women. I just don't see that in Hacker News or YC, when men are mature they don't do those sorts of things.
So yes sexism does exist and there are issues, but not everywhere. The word Feminism in itself is sexist because it only mentions the female gender and there are more than male and female genders out there. Hence Humanism would be a better name or Equalism because it does not mention gender.
I want to state that equal rights is different from special rights and entitlements. If anyone wants a career in IT, they have to study hard at math and science, they have to work for years to become an expert sometimes as many as 15 years. You can't just avoid studying hard, blow off math and science, and then study arts instead and then claim you are owned a job in IT because of your gender. If you want a job in IT, study math and science instead of art, keep learning and gaining experience over the years to become better so you can get a job. Communication is a key, and about 80% of the job. If you cannot communicate with others effectively and keep using the terms mansplaining when something is over your head and you need help with, it isn't going to help the team and make you look bad.
Admiral Grace Hopper, Ada Augusta Lovelace, Sister Mary Kenneth Keller, and many others studied hard, worked hard, developed the experience and skills they needed and didn't have anything handed to them, or were entitled to anything, or required special treatment. They just studied math and science, studied hard, worked hard, and reached their potential to develop the experience and skills they needed to do what they did.
> Feminism supports gender equality
> I dislike the idea that men can only be sold on feminism
> if they think there's something in it for them
You'll do better if you wait ten years, and then try to explain to the software engineer he became that he has relative privilege compared to the sophisticated VP of Sales who dresses to kill, or girls he meets in bars, but still, you're going to have a bit of a struggle.
You and I can reel off 50 ways in which he's privileged, and the inherent advantages he has by being white, male, smart, etc, but what he knows is that he has a daily grind, and that he has a lot of relationships in his life with women where they hold /all/ the cards.
While people continue to be blind to their own privilege, and only see the highlight reels of other people's privilege (eg: forever), you're only going to be able to sell it on gender equality, rather than "women's rights need to increase beyond where they are now".
Dislike it all you want, doesn't change the reality that if you have one self-interested faction whose interests appear to conflict with a different self-interested faction, then the interests will need to be "sold" or else forced on the other faction.
Hence: appeals to shared principles like "equality." Even when the positions are demonstrably not about equality at all.
Suffice to say, to me a feminist is a person who is actively part of the movement. I've never heard "feminist" used to mean "believes in gender equality".
Let's review some definitions for feminism:
"the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities"
"the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes"
Which part of that do you disagree with that makes you not a feminist?
And, if being a feminist means one supports gender equality (which is what it means), how do you believe it can ever follow that not being feminist doesn't make one sexist? Seems like believing that people should be treated differently based on their sex is the very definition of sexism.
I don't identify with feminists or men's rights activists today because equality is not those specific group's goal.
I can imaging many people who have not studied feminist theory and yet still believe in the principles you listed. Can we legitimately ask that they self-identify as something of which they have little or no functional understanding?
Some people, having been accused of being "not _real_ feminists" one time to many, stop self-identifying as such (even though their views on gender equality have not changed).
I suspect the bad reputation is primarily caused by bad actors who are actually anti-feminist, and who don't want us to continue to move toward equality. 4chan has frequently leaked made up "feminist" rants into the internet at large, right wing Christians very frequently paint an extremely negative view of feminism, etc. There are plenty of people who genuinely oppose gender equality who will say or do anything to stop feminism in its tracks.
I used to be squeamish about the term, too. But, then I spent some time reflecting on why. And, the reality is that all the negative connotations I have about feminism (other than the anti-trans so-called "radical feminists" that even feminists make fun of) come from things men who are demonstrably against equality of the sexes have said or done.
The feminists I know (and I know a lot of them; I helped start a pro-choice activist organization here in Texas when the bills that are forcing closure of all but six clinics in the entire state were making their way through the state house) are nothing like the picture Republicans paint of them, nor are they anything like the caricature that some redditors and HN participants seem to believe is the reality. I don't know where these ideas even come from, honestly. The feminists I know are regular people, who see some injustice in our society and are trying to do something about it. They may occasionally be wrong on the details of execution, but they aren't man-hating bitches from hell, and it's really counter-productive to take the most extreme examples of anything and decide that the entire movement can be ignored because a few said something obnoxious.
To be fair, though, I used to identify as Libertarian. But, the bad apples within that movement seemed to overwhelm the reasonable folks; and there seems to be a movement of extreme right wing nationalists calling themselves "libertarian" lately, which finally put the last nail in the coffin for me. When "libertarian" came to mean "we need paramilitary thugs patrolling our borders to keep those illegals out" to the majority of people, it was time for me to opt out completely from using that label (not to mention the idiotic positions on climate change many self-identified libertarians take). So, I understand where you're coming from. I feel as though I've been robbed of an identity by ignorant nationalist racists. And, I guess if I believed everyone saw feminism the way you, and some others seem to, I don't know if I'd be as comfortable using the term.
I don't know what the right thing here is, but I know that there is a strongly anti-woman bias among many participants on reddit, and on HN, and it shows itself in all sorts of subtle and not so subtle ways. My most downvoted comments on both reddit and Hacker News have frequently been about sexism or racism or privilege (and occasionally about Apple, but I'll happily take those lumps), and I find it pretty reactionary and disappointing, but not surprising.
As it is, the perception to the vast majority of people is such that I find it more effective to avoid the word and simply advance the equal rights part.
Wanting to avoid associating yourself with the general zeitgeist of thought generated by soi-disant feminists is, annoyingly, quite reasonable currently.
"With friends like these, who needs enemies" applies a lot more often than I might like :(
I think its asking way too much of someone who wants to join a casual site known for cat pics and meme jokes to read through the couple dozen default sub rules. There's no practical educational solution here. The volume of new users and the labor of understanding all these rules is huge and its impractical to expect people to digest it all, especially for a topic most users, being male, aren't into. Lets also not be ignorant of the massive feminist thought that dominates subs like 2x. To you, its mainstream, if not conservative, to others its very different from what they're used to. Why do you think subjecting random people to that and not expecting some kind of reaction?
Reddit's idea of default subs seems flawed to me. Perhaps it should have suggested defaults when you make an account and you choose what you're interested in. Non-logged in users should get, maybe, randomized top 500 or so subs. Hand-picking subs, many of which are instantly polarizing (atheism, worldnews, politics, 2X, etc) is really an insane way to run that site.
Worse, once a sub is made a default, its quantity goes up but its quality goes down. /r/writingprompts was once a fun place for authors to get some practice. The highest rated stories were usually good for a read, but now its a default sub, and its unreadable. The top comments tend to be half-assed efforts usually ending in a joke or even a reddit in-joke because the guy who posts something silly immediately will dominate while the guy still working on his story and posts after an hour of writing ends up being comment 78 and no one scrolls that far down to read. Heck, that sub is so bad, that if you want to read a decent story you start at the bottom, with the lowest ranked items, and scroll up. Talk about failure of design!
/r/books was an okay resource for the casual reader and now is dominated by items that are, imo, much more lowest common denominator. I'm sure there are more examples.
I really think reddit is about ready to have its disruptive MySpace moment when some Facebook-like competitor moves in. The default subs are unrreadable dreck, the politics a mix of the ugliest libertarian meets social justice warrior crap, and the mod policy a schizophrenic per sub mess that pleases no one. Most subs seem completely overwhelmed and just resort to strict rules and 'self post only' policies to keep some level of sanity. This isn't a sign of a healthy system.