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Alternatives to reddit?

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njean777

njean777

Member
Stereogatari said:
The Islamophobia on Reddit is the worst. A religion that is spread across 50 different countries and 50+ different ethnic groups, a quarter of the world's population, is shoehorned into one big evil group out to cause harm to every non-Muslim. According to the consensus on Reddit the majority of Muslims are super religious and live every aspect of their life according to exact Islamic doctrine. No you fucking retards, the world is so much more complicated than that.

It makes the world look like a Saturday morning cartoon.

It's so hypocritical from the website in general which is liberal and intelligent generally. But when it comes to Muslims oh boy. Suddenly everyone is an expert.
Click to expand...

Anything when it comes to religion on Gaf and Reddit, aside from maybe r/Philosophy, is a shit show of epic proportions. Atheists on here and reddit are loud, and obnoxious. It is one of the main reasons I stay out of any discussion based on the matter unless it is in that subreddit, or with actual people.
 
Z

Zibrahim

Member
I've been on reddit for years and I want to say I stopped posting altogether in mid to late 2012.

In 2009-2010, it was golden. There were unique and interesting websites, links, images, etc being posted. It was a legitimately interesting website.

But by 2011 it just exploded and everyone and their grandma thought they were part of a cool secret website no one knows about. This was around the time Narwhal Bacon or whatever that shit is became popular.

It just got out of control after that point and I lost incentive to keep posting because rational and well thought out posts got replaced by forced puns and contrived, immature opinions.

One subreddit that became the epitome of the change was r/atheism. It was literally a forum of immature idiots claiming the Abrahamic God isn't real and airing out their grievances against Christianity rather than having rational and philosophical conversations about religion as a whole.


Anyway, I haven't gone on reddit in a long time and I don't think I will. So I'd definitely be interested in an alternative.
 
R

RustyNails

Member
Reddit has been following the Digg model of death, especially the front page.

Nuance is rubbished away in favor of pictures. Racist, sexist, homophobic jokes and comments are upvoted to the top. r/worldnews is a festering cesspool of scum that floated to the top. Some subreddits are okay, but you really have to look.
 
C

Chezzymann

Member
The main thing I dislike about reddit is the upvote system. It ruins any chance at articles longer than a few paragraphs or videos longer than a minute getting any traction and makes any thread only last a day or two at most due to it requiring to have a constant stream of upvotes to get exposure. It really only works if you want quick, mindless entertainment/news and nothing else. Oh yeah, and the upvote system also stifles minority opinions and heavily promotes 'circlejerks' as many on that site would say.

Now, there are some subreddits that are good for very specific interests (and those really only work because they're not as popular as the other ones) but they still suffer from the horrible upvote system.
 
R

richiek

steals Justin Bieber DVDs
Azurex said:
It's a hivemind, and if you dare have an opinion different from that, you're going to be 'downvoted' to oblivion. Like America? Oh dear, don't ever mention that. Didn't you know that it's literally hell on earth? Have an interest in guns? You might as well be Satan. Don't think Valve is the best company in the world? Well, there's clearly something wrong with you! It's just a massive circlejerk. I've gotten to the point where I see all users of that site as snotty, smug-ass, edgy teens instead of actual individual people, and I just have an irrational hatred towards them all.
Click to expand...

Actually, I find it to be quite the opposite. Reddit is very pro-gun and pro-America.

I do agree that the hive mind mentality is one the major annoyances of reddit.
 
F

friskykillface

Banned
Reddit is alright, I have an account there and post in the game swap/sell threads, I got some good trades :D

But a huge section of reddit can be full of douches x dicks, also racists :/
 
Z

zero shift

Banned
Neogaf and Something Awful are really the only other alternatives. Everywhere else isn't either active enough, or just terrible.
 
V

Valhelm

contribute something
Reddit is a cool place to see new content and ask questions to huge groups of people but is an absolute shit site for any kind of serious discussion.
 
J

Jacobi

Banned
Yeah, I really try to ignore reddit. It's just one stupid mess. People don't even read articles when they are linked, and I'd honestly say the overall quality is fucking worse than tabloids... It's honestly enraging and you notice that there are a lot of kids and teens there (@GAF now as well). My alternative is just serious news sources... I don't really miss much.
 
entremet

entremet

Member
Reddit is way too varied to be categorized.

I never understand the comparison to Reddit, a huge comglomerate website, which anyone could start a subreddit--anyone, to a small and vetted community like NeoGAF.

Reddit has some best websites bar none on the internet. AskHistorians is a masterpiece.

Every subreddit is its own entity and is ran by its own group of mods.

I never understood people looking as Reddit as a monolith. It's far from that.
 
eot

eot

Banned
Aside from disagreement downvotes, the biggest problem I have with reddit is that it becomes unusable after a submission gets more than say 200 comments. It works for some things, but it's terrible for having discussions.
 
J

Jacobi

Banned
entrement said:
Reddit is way too varied to be categorized.

I never understand the comparison to Reddit, a huge comglomerate website, which anyone could start a subreddit--anyone, to a small and vetted community like NeoGAF.

Reddit has some best websites bar none on the internet. AskHistorians is a masterpiece.

Every subreddit is its own entity and is ran by its own group of mods.

I never understood people looking as Reddit as a monolith. It's far from that.
Click to expand...

My experience with it has been that either the subreddit is crowded as hell and bad or interesting and no one posts there....
 
Lactose_Intolerant

Lactose_Intolerant

Member
Donos said:
Sorry bboy but i don't agree that you get banned on gaf for a minority opinion. Other thing is going into a halo thread like *halo sucks lol, cod is betta* or constantly pestering an android thread with how superior ios is.

Sure, there are very thin lines in some threads about racism, feminism, pedophilia/sex with young people etc where people get sometimes banned for their "opinion" but overall? Gaf is moderated quite well in my eyes. That's why i prefer gaf over other sites.
Click to expand...

So basically what the person you were responding to said why they avoid those threads
 
J

Jokab

Member
Stereogatari said:
The Islamophobia on Reddit is the worst. A religion that is spread across 50 different countries and 50+ different ethnic groups, a quarter of the world's population, is shoehorned into one big evil group out to cause harm to every non-Muslim. According to the consensus on Reddit the majority of Muslims are super religious and live every aspect of their life according to exact Islamic doctrine. No you fucking retards, the world is so much more complicated than that.

It makes the world look like a Saturday morning cartoon.

It's so hypocritical from the website in general which is liberal and intelligent generally. But when it comes to Muslims oh boy. Suddenly everyone is an expert.
Click to expand...

You say Muslims shouldn't be categorized as a single homogenous group. Then why are you doing the same to Reddit? Reddit is not comprised by a single subreddit, there are literally tens of thousands of subreddits to choose from. Only a small subset of these are Islamophobic as you describe, just like a subset of Muslims are radical maniacs.
 
entremet

entremet

Member
Jokab said:
You say Muslims shouldn't be categorized as a single homogenous group. Then why are you doing the same to Reddit? Reddit is not comprised by a single subreddit, there are literally tens of thousands of subreddits to choose from. Only a small subset of these are Islamophobic as you describe, just like a subset of Muslims are radical maniacs.
Click to expand...

Exactly.
 
V

Valhelm

contribute something
entrement said:
Reddit is way too varied to be categorized.

I never understand the comparison to Reddit, a huge comglomerate website, which anyone could start a subreddit--anyone, to a small and vetted community like NeoGAF.

Reddit has some best websites bar none on the internet. AskHistorians is a masterpiece.

Every subreddit is its own entity and is ran by its own group of mods.

I never understood people looking as Reddit as a monolith. It's far from that.
Click to expand...

While I totally agree, there is a culture that permeates the site, and most non-academic subs. This culture includes:
  1. A big casual appreciation for frontier science
  2. A belief that STEM classes are superior to the humanities
  3. A dislike for the idea of feminism
  4. A love for cats
  5. An interest in contrarianism
  6. Lots of middle school/bro-ish humor about sex and masturbation
  7. The belief that everyone is a dude by default

Some of those little quirks are less savory than others, and they all permeate the large subs to some degree. /r/oldschoolcool is basically just a place to make crude joke's about OP's attractive grandmother.
 
A

AlexBasch

Member
Reddit is better at controversial subjects because you only get downvoted by the majority.

In GAF, you will get banned for something some mod didn't like.

A belief that STEM classes are superior to the humanities
Click to expand...
So just like GAF, then.
 
entremet

entremet

Member
Valhelm said:
While I totally agree, there is a culture that permeates the site, and most non-academic subs. This culture includes:
  1. A big casual appreciation for frontier science
  2. A belief that STEM classes are superior to the humanities
  3. A dislike for the idea of feminism
  4. A love for cats
  5. An interest in contrarianism
  6. Lots of middle school/bro-ish humor about sex and masturbation
  7. The belief that everyone is a dude by default

Some of those little quirks are less savory than others, and they all permeate the large subs to some degree. /r/oldschoolcool is basically just a place to make crude joke's about OP's attractive grandmother.
Click to expand...
Never really noticed this on the subreddits I frequent.

The STEM one is funny, because that's the internet in a nutshell lol.
 
V

Valhelm

contribute something
entrement said:
Never really noticed this on the subreddits I frequent.

The STEM one is funny, because that's the internet in a nutshell lol.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I mostly go to subreddits where there is a vested interest in art, music, and the social sciences, so those circlejerks tend to not be as frequent.

The STEM is one is worse on Reddit than anywhere else, I think. This sexist 4chan post was something Redditors would usually eat up, but most of the comments were people offended by the joke about STEM kids.
 
entremet

entremet

Member
richiek said:
Agreed, considering the popularity of guns and Bitcoin on reddit.
Click to expand...

It's growing in tech circles. SF is basically a huge libertarian experiment right now with rising rents, private transportation, startups attacking government monopolies and high regulation--Uber, AirBnB
 
D

Dr.Acula

Banned
I remember at some point I started dreading getting an "orangred" more than looking forward to it.

I say 70% of people that reply to me are mean-spirited or moronic.

The hive-minding on /r/toronto is horrible, you get down voted for everything there and people get really angry there over the smallest things.

Whenever I read a political story on the front page, and the comments section is bizarro world, I look at the sub and it's always /r/libertarian. That always makes me laugh. Like any issue and for some reason the root cause was government regulation, and I'm all "wait, that has nothing to do with -fuck, I'm on /r/libertarian!"
 
V

v1lla21

Member
Yeah I'd say it's 65% shit and 35% good. I only follow subreddits for F1, MTG, Hearthstone, and cars and most of them pretty civil. I stay away from the bigger known subs since they are mostly shit. Some of the porn subreddits are pretty cool too.
 
D

Dr.Acula

Banned
Oh shit, I forgot to mention my alternative.

Op, check out Metafilter! Metafilter is a great blog and has one of the most intelligent comment sections on the web. Of course it's five bucks if you want to comment, but it's a good site just for reading. They've even covered gamergate.
 
T

theSlacker

Member
I just stick to 4chan, but do recognize it isn't for everyone. It has some of the circlejerk problems that you mentioned with reddit, but your opinion will never be hidden or down voted for being unpopular. Well I mean unless it is about how much you love to post child porn. No building of rep or an image so people disagreeing with you doesn't really matter and your point of view on every subject stands on it's own without the baggage of not agreeing with/being one of the right people. That kind of openness and freedom comes with a price though.
 
entremet

entremet

Member
4chan is a mess to read.

I never understood the appeal of the site. The UI is also disgusting. Like internet circa 94.
 
T

theSlacker

Member
entrement said:
4chan is a mess to read.

I never understood the appeal of the site. The UI is also disgusting. Like internet circa 94.
Click to expand...

Oh, how so? There are several features on it that I wish GAF and other forums would use. Stuff like being able to see how many and what the replies to any single post are.
 
F

FelixOrion

Poet Centuriate
Darkangel said:
4chan is actually a decent alternative if you want a diverse discussion. Contrary to popular belief, it isn't a child porn website filled with hackers on steroids. Decent discussions can be found on most boards, though some have more than others. Just stay away from /b/ (random) and the weird interest boards.

Most boards get news related to their topic posted pretty quickly. Not fully sure what your interests are, but here are some alright boards:

/Sci/ - Science and Math
/g/ - Technology
/vr/ - Retro Gaming
/vg/ - Videogame General (the equivalent of gaf OT threads are found here)
/co/ - Comics and Cartoons
/mu/ - Music (prepare to discover obscure bands)
/lit/ - Literature

/pol/ - Politically Incorrect is basically the current events board, but it is filled with racists and homophobes. If you can wade through the garbage you can sometimes find a good philosophical debate.

/tv/ - Television and Film is alright, but it's currently going through a (hilarious) shitposting renaissance.
Click to expand...

/sp/ is secretly/not secretly the best board.
 
H

Helmholtz

Member
I just go on reddit when I want to look at stupid pictures and not have to read much.
99% of the time the comments on there piss me off. Really juvenile shit gets upvoted to the top on a regular basis.
 
Halcyon

Halcyon

Member
My issue with reddit is that it seems like by the afternoon nothing new/interesting is being posted.


Once you get past the big posts for the day it just gets stagnant until the next morning.
 
C

Cse

Banned
Azurex said:
It's a hivemind, and if you dare have an opinion different from that, you're going to be 'downvoted' to oblivion. Like America? Oh dear, don't ever mention that. Didn't you know that it's literally hell on earth? Have an interest in guns? You might as well be Satan. Don't think Valve is the best company in the world? Well, there's clearly something wrong with you! It's just a massive circlejerk. I've gotten to the point where I see all users of that site as snotty, smug-ass, edgy teens instead of actual individual people, and I just have an irrational hatred towards them all.
?
Click to expand...

Sounds like you're on the wrong subreddits.

Certain subreddits can function as a hivemind, but keep in mind that reddit isn't a singular community or website. Rather, it's a massive constellation of differing communities.

The entire point behind reddit is to calibrate your list of subscribed subreddits based on your own interests and philosophies. Unsubscribe from /r/politics, /r/gaming, /r/adviceanimals, etc, and seek out subreddits that cater to your interests.
 
L

LordAzrael

Banned
entrement said:
Reddit is way too varied to be categorized.

I never understand the comparison to Reddit, a huge comglomerate website, which anyone could start a subreddit--anyone, to a small and vetted community like NeoGAF.

Reddit has some best websites bar none on the internet. AskHistorians is a masterpiece.

Every subreddit is its own entity and is ran by its own group of mods.

I never understood people looking as Reddit as a monolith. It's far from that.
Click to expand...

Pretty much. It is such a HUGE website, how can anyone just write off the whole thing?
 
C

Cse

Banned
entrement said:
Reddit is way too varied to be categorized.

I never understand the comparison to Reddit, a huge comglomerate website, which anyone could start a subreddit--anyone, to a small and vetted community like NeoGAF.

Reddit has some best websites bar none on the internet. AskHistorians is a masterpiece.

Every subreddit is its own entity and is ran by its own group of mods.

I never understood people looking as Reddit as a monolith. It's far from that.
Click to expand...

While I agree with your message, the idea that Reddit functions as a "monolith" stems from the fact that there are a few large subreddits which attract the overwhelming majority of users.

/r/politics
/r/news
/r/worldnews
/r/technology

Let's say you're a corporation. Or a lobbying group. Or a third party marketing agency. How easy would it be to get in touch with the 6-7 mods of a subreddit that displays information to hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis, and somehow "influence" them to filter out certain information? Or, what if you could have those mods sell you their mod accounts, giving you the ability to control the flow of information on the subreddit?

Believe it or not, but some of these large subreddits have suffered from similar issues in the past.

It's absolutely vital that people remember that reddit isn't just the large subreddits - it's a multitude of differing, unique communities.

/r/askscience, /r/science, /r/writingprompts, and /r/changemyview are some of my favorites. I could easily spend hours per day on these four subreddits alone (and often times do).
 
K

kingkitty

Member
Azurex said:
Like America? Oh dear, don't ever mention that. Didn't you know that it's literally hell on earth? Have an interest in guns? You might as well be Satan.
Click to expand...

What subs are you subscribed to? Tons of subs have a friendly attitude towards guns, unfortunately.
 
M

MrBadger

Member
The bigger a site gets, the shittier the community will be. Same for just about every site on the internet. I don't think there's anything wrong with Reddit so long as you ignore the defaults and subscribe to things that cater to personal interests.
 
Surface of Me

Surface of Me

I'm not an NPC. And neither are we.
4chan and NeoGAF cover my forum needs. /x/ is entertaining for pasta, shitpostin, and schizophrenic ramblings.
 
S

SugarDave

Member
entrement said:
4chan is a mess to read.

I never understood the appeal of the site. The UI is also disgusting. Like internet circa 94.
Click to expand...

Just install 4chan X/Plus and switch to catalog view. Finding and reading threads you're interested in is a hell of a lot easier that way.
 
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