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[OPINION] My three years on Reddit, and where to next

Once upon a time, roughly three years ago, I started browsing Reddit through a site called Memebase. Memebase (mostly) exists to republish amusing gifs and links from other sites; think of it as 9Gag with a slightly better name.

Naturally, Reddit crops up on Memebase many times as a source for its content, so I was a infrequent visitor to Reddit via links. At the time, I was put off of hanging around on Reddit by the lack of direction and the literally faceless community that didn’t even have avatars to help me navigate the comments.

But I always returned, because Reddit simply had the best content. I could end my piece here with that sentence, which doubles as the reason the site is so popular today. Not only are the posts something I could give a toss about, but Reddit usually gets the best content online the fastest.

I spent the first two years on the site as a “lurker”. Lurkers make up the majority of any given internet community and are those who passively consume what actual users create. Those two years I happily browsed the gaming, pictures and funny subreddits without an account.

But something changed a year ago. I wanted to build a PC. I finally had my first job that paid real money, and I could finally afford a PC made of actual real parts. And, although I knew how to build one, I had no idea what to build it out of. PC components fluctuate in price and “worth” (how well they’ll run games, which is what I wanted a PC for) so wildly that the community created a saying for the buying experience: “the best time to buy your components is the day after you already have”. Fearing the deadly first world burn of buyer’s regret, I took to a subreddit called “Build a PC” to seek the sagely comments of internet strangers.

But I needed to create a post for my free advice, and I needed an account to do that, so my years of lurking were over.

And so my handful of posts asking for advice started me on the slippery slope. Once I had a PC I now wanted a subreddit to talk to other like-minded PC gamers, and I found one. I then became addicted to an MMO called Warframe, and hey! There’s a subreddit for that! Let me post on it several times a day! Four hundred hours of Warframe and I uninstalled it, with all my free time I began helping my niece and nephew build Lego and… hmm, I bet there’s a subreddit about it and, oh? A sub about Bionicle, that outrageously popular Lego series in the early 2000’s that drained parent’s bank account faster than a coke habbit in the 80’s? Sign me up!

Again I could end this piece rambling on about the forty or so subredits that I now actively partake in. If you’d like the breadth of my selection; I’m part of a community that focuses on health and fitness (and everything that encompasses), and one that focuses, entirely, on grilled cheese sandwiches. I have a few dozen posts, thousands of comments and a good chunk of sweet, sweet karma. To me, Reddit isn’t a website any more, it’s my internet. I don’t browse separate websites for news, or entertainment or my hobbies, because there is a subreddit for anything and everything I want. And hey, if there’s content that I want to see that no one is making, I can make and post it, more karma for me, amiright?

But the news about Reddit has been decidedly discouraging recently. I’ve drawn up a handy list to condense the news into a fun little text-based journey of despair.

  1. Reddit announces it will close down several subredddits under its new user policy, the reason given is “to reduce harassment”.
  2. The community hails this as the end of the site, infighting and arguments ensue.
  3. A large amount of Reddit goes dark after a popular employee and community figurehead is fired, seemingly with no rhyme or reason.
  4. The community hails this as the end of the site, infighting and arguments ensue.
  5. Reddit’s interim CEO apologises for previous actions. She is already disliked by the community and this is seen as a PR stunt.
  6. The community hails this as the end of the site, infighting and arguments ensue.
  7. The interim CEO leaves the company.
  8. Surprisingly, the community fights a tad less and sees this as an improvement, but many think the damage has already been done and.. hails this as the end of the site, infighting and arguments ensue.

So, what do I think? Am I already on a life boat or am I one of the band members, playing as the ship sinks, wondering if my sousaphone will float?

Here’s my thoughts about the future of Reddit… I don’t think anything’s going to happen.

Reddit has a terrible case of short term memory. Sure, when Redditors want to rant and rave it will cover the front page and, hell, they did effectively shut down the site at one point (that’s the power of a site built on the back of free labour). But head to the front page of Reddit on most days and it’s filled with cats and women. And don’t forget about reposts – people stealing other’s content for dat Karma. When the scandal and anger has passed, we’ll all log in tomorrow to upvote a gif of a cat touching a girl’s boob, or something.

On that note, should I be proven wrong and content producers decide to leave Reddit, readers and pundits should bear this in mind; all the talk of community and free speech on the site is a smokescreen. Reddit doesn’t draw readers and users because its stands for any democratic or social principles. It draws readers because it has great content and the people producing said content leave Reddit, the lurkers will follow and form around wherever the best ends up. That’s what it’s about at the end of the day: cool stuff to look at and talk about, and pictures of (among other things) cats.

It’s not about community or free speech. I/we will go where the best content is.

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