I like how the user claims 2016-2019 as good years. From what I remember, the 2016 election was when reddit started turning to trash with the political astroturfing and right wing trolls making bad faith arguments. When was the crazy with the totally-not-staged crazy doorbell camera videos?
2016’ish was when the The_Donald started its come up, which absolutely was a negative for the site. 2015 had FatPeopleHate, Even in 2011 they had the jailbait subreddit.
So saying it was ever particularly good is kind of… lmao
I don’t think shithead communities are an indication of quality. Lemmy has quite a few despite otherwise having early reddit feelings.
I think the quality of comments is a bigger indicator. Reddit started to feel shit when thought out comments got drowned out by the sea of low effort memes, one liners and other overused references. Lemmy also has those comments but the ratio of quality to shit is much higher.
I don’t think shithead communities are an indication of quality.
Places like The_Donald and FatPeopleHate didn’t just stay within their little communities. They shat up the rest of reddit, and because their communities were allowed to flourish, they had a base of operations to recruit more shitters from. Once those communities got banned/quarantined, the behavior diminished noticeably, as the community found they weren’t welcome and often simply left.
I eventually signed up to Reddit in 2011 when it started to become less of the “wild west.” I mean anything could pop up on the front page. 2015 I really got sick of US politics in everything, and I think after the 2016 election, I found out just how many subreddits were controlled and modded by like 4 people. Reddit had a plethora of issues well before most current users even arrived.
The most active posts are now bot-created open-ended conversation starters on r/askreddit to stir up activity and give the illusion of a thriving community. The questions are usually very redditer patronizing, and some of them are thinly veiled marketing analysis to create value for future shareholders. they’re often saturated with butt created responses.
As to why the post in question may not still exist? I suspect substantial posts about bot saturation are probably filtered out.
Wait what. Right wing presence was gradually purged from 2016 onwards. The main change that period is the site having become a hyper American left-wing echo chamber. And the American part is important since leftism in other traditions tend to turn eyes at American progressives
I always side stepped the whole gamergate thing while it was at it’s height. Something always stank about that affair.
I would say gamergate wasn’t the first battle, but more like a “Southern Strategy” of gaming. Previously, gaming culture was the target of conservatives. I remember Jack Thompson.
As gaming went “mainstream” and gamers aged into the voting range and boomers became less and less swing voters, conservatives started using the same tactics to draw in gamers as neo-nazis used to draw in the punk scene.
Gamergate and 2016 US Politics go hand-in-hand, as Steve Bannon was an orchestrater of the former as a trial run for the latter.
I’d say I can’t believe everything is shit because of porn-addicted white people on the internet, but historically speaking that’s been the motivation behind almost every fascist movement.
