For a "community" that preaches tolerance, a large number of people on Reddit seems to lack just that, tolerance. I use the term community lightly, because sometimes Reddit appear more to be an angry mob.
There is a very limited set of opinions and beliefs that are accepted on Reddit. Mostly the moderators don't seem to mind, but it's pretty obvious that derivation from the accepted truth is down voted to an extreme. Being exposed to a large number of different opinions is generally a health thing, but it also highlight the possibility that you might be wrong, and people, Redditors least of all, don't want to be proven wrong.
Personally, I think it's a generational thing; the notion that everyone deserves to feel honored and precious on the internet first and foremost is a new one.
"You're unique! You're special! You matter!"
This is the sentiment that seems so pervasive, and as Gen-X, one I find saccharine and stomach-churning.
"Conservative" != "Hateful". Speaking from experience, some of the most prejudiced people I've had to deal with in my life were my most liberal college professors.
As an actual liberal, I prefer the term "authoritarian liberal" to distinguish anti-free speech and 'edgy' sexist/racist left folk from liberals. And I've never understood conservatives as much as I do now.
Conservative is probably the wrong word, hateful being more correct. And it's a serious problem on reddit.
The majority of redditors are generally left-leaning. But the hateful people on reddit are more organized and more dedicated. They participate in degrading the experience of anyone who doesn't believe the same as they do, and that drives some people away. Outside of the very few well moderated sub-reddits this is a serious problem. I wouldn't say it's enough to bring reddit down, yet, but it's pretty bad.
I'm not sure if it's intentional, but you make it sound like left-leaning people can't be hateful. The left-leaning crowd of redditors can be just as hateful towards the people they disagree with as the right wing.
As a right-leaning, generally-conservative guy, the most organized hate I've gotten on reddit is because I'm a right-leaning, generally-conservative guy rather than being a more-reddit-acceptable left-leaning Sanders-supporting liberal.
This mirrors my experience. I take my ideas from both right and left, but if I post any left-wing viewpoint on something (corporate taxation, say) the hard right might disagree but they keep it respectful. Whereas say anything even centrist and I get instant, vicious hate and bile from the left.
Fortunately those people have very poor impulse control and are prone to rage-blocking, so I never have to bother with them for long, but there's always more.
Describes my experiences as well, both online and off. People love to paint conservatives as dumb and intolerant, but like you I generally find the right to be willing to debate, whereas the left considers themselves right, end of discussion.
I don't think that it actually breaks down that way. In my experience both conservatives and liberals are composed 80% of people who can talk rationally with only their own side and 20% by who are prepared talk rationally with people from either side. You need to be a lot more knowledgeable about a subject to constructively discuss it with someone who disagrees with you.
A big part of the problem, then, is that if you are not paying close enough attention it looks like your side is 100% reasonable and the other side is mostly unreasonable, regardless of which side you are on.
Heh, not my experiences at all. Especially the right wingers in the comments section of my local paper--post anything about bikes, for example, and the folks with Reagan as their user icon immediately come out with stuff about how badly they'd like to run any cyclist down in their truck.
But, even given that, I'd hasten to put anything down as "those people are the real jerks," because I don't think anyone has a monopoly on being a jerk.
I have a mild suspicion that a lot of it comes down basically to what the cultural norm is for your area in terms of political leanings, as that's likely to rope in the most people who aren't really paying attention to what they think as much as what "their people" think -- and so they make politics into a team sport.
Honestly I think when communities become large, it's the moderates who lose. I'm regularly downvoted into oblivion and most of my opinions are moderate-left. It doesn't matter how much you support Sanders, try pointing out that just saying "Fukushima" a thousand times isn't justification for deriding nuclear energy and you'll quickly find your comment straddling the bottom of the page at -500.
Thank you for this very well written response. I was struggling to say what you just explained so well.
The reason I personally think it will destroy Reddit is because it has already ruined a few of the subreddits I subscribe to. Mainly /r/technology, /r/news, and /r/politics.
A lot of the default sub-reddits are weakly moderated, and so very vulnerable to brigading, bullying, harassment, and boundary pushing. You see a lot of carefully crafted racism and "anti-sjw" posts in the default sub-reddits, for example. Bit by bit, drop by drop, they apply a consistent pressure. The mods of those sub-reddits are too dumb to figure out what's going on, or just don't care. Unfortunately, all of this slowly drives away people who are sensitive enough to care, or just ordinary people. For them, it's not worth it to "fight the good fight", is some dumb sub-reddit worth that cost? Of course not, so they leave and go somewhere else. This is a slow dynamics problem, and the "good" parts of reddit aren't strong enough to save the site.
Realistically, if reddit itself does nothing then it's maybe a 50/50 chance whether or not these forces eventually poison the site for average users, and people just stop going there. For most people these things aren't super noticeable, yet, because they're still not the dominant aspect of the site, but they've driven away who knows how many people, and continue to do so, while the racists, homophobes, and misogynists still have their little clubs on the site. Some of the worst sub-reddits were banned a while back, but many horrid ones still exist. And the people who spend their time there spend their time posting and voting on other parts of reddit as well.
> Of course not, so they leave and go somewhere else.
Somewhere else often being another subreddit. Topical subreddits are fine. But I guess all depends on what we mean by "saving the site".
> Realistically, if reddit itself does nothing then it's maybe a 50/50 chance whether or not these forces eventually poison the site for average users, and people just stop going there.
People won't stop going to topical subreddits because main Reddit is not the discovery mechanism - Google, word-of-mouth and websites linking to topical subreddits are. As for poisoning the site for average users - I think average users are the poison.
As an honest reply its not a Reddit specific problem that any discussion of technology, news, or politics inevitably leads to scorched earth where-ever its tried. Its not doomed because its reddit, its doomed because those are really dumb discussion topics to have unless you want to watch the world burn.
Now if everyone present likes a nice bonfire, then sitting around toasting our marshmallows is fun, but there's always some "smokey the bear" who sees his duty as saying "only you can prevent forest fires".
On the other hand, /r/mechanicalkeyboards is pretty awesome. Some of the modded minecraft specific subreddits I read are pretty awesome (shout out to /r/feedthebeast)
Because there's never anything really new under the sun, the ham radio guys figured out codes of conduct about a century ago that actually worked along the lines of forbidding politics, religion, and other issues, at least in civilized company, along with some basic protocol, etc.
