Cartelization of R*ddit

[McGovern '72!]

I know this proves I'm a soyjak fucking bastard but I was browsing the >reddit front page a little while earlier and then suddenly got a weird feeling from a lot of the posts. So I check the users and check where they've been posting and holy fuck! I thought I was addicted to online but these faggots post a neverending stream of slop on an hourly basis. These are people whose existences must be dedicated to nothing but scraping the internet for what little original content there is and shitting it out onto random >reddit subs. And even then they just repost things posted by other redditors who do this same thing.

Well, everybody knows that the >reddit front page is filled with a bunch of karmawhores (like gallowb00b), but what no one talks about is how this shit applies to literally every single subreddit. 90% of them are dominated by cliques of 2-5 users who spam shit onto >reddit constantly. And I really mean 90% of them, too: everything from pictures to femcels to fetish porn is dominated by localized cliques of >reddit-addicted weirdos. I could pull up some screenshots but honestly I'm too fucking lazy and you can just see this for yourself. It's weird and makes the "JFK didn't kill himself" part of my brain tingle in a bad way. You guys are probably gonna love pseud larping about it tho.

 

[Digital Cheese]

>reddit, it doesn't even surprise me.

front page is filled with a bunch of karmawhores (like gallowb00b)

I will recount a bit of my experience back when I actually used >reddit, I still have the account but only because I physically can't delete it as of now.

Essentially, I realized just how easy it was to beat the karma system. I have nearly 50K karma sitting around, and all i had to do was steal memes and post them to r/shitposting (this was back when it was not *entirely* terrible, even me now wouldn't have entirely hated it 2 years ago). I found a meme that was a bit old (but not too frequently reposted), reuploaded it, waited for the karma to roll in. You physically can't lose any post karma and you can only lose a very, very small fraction of comment karma, I believe less than 20 per comment.

With enough power, you could probably actually manipulate the masses who happen to use reddit. The problem however, is that Redditors are all cripply-retarded children and man-children, not anyone of any actual use. So unless you're intending to spread something very politically correct OR something so clean that you could show it to a 3 year old, good-luck exploiting them. In fairness, >reddit wouldn't be that bad if the website's administrators weren't likely to ban your account within 5 minutes if you say anything too controversial, since you could just create a sub->reddit without retardation.

Would it still be amazing? Probably not, but it would be usable. Though considering the forever terrible state of >reddit, I would just use it to troll. Maybe if a subreddit which uses a different language (that isn't English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, and other more common ones) would be based since you might have an easier time evading the rules especially if it's a REALLY obscure one, but otherwise >reddit sucks and it doesn't surprise me the entire thing went downhill. If I ever get a way to delete my >reddit account, I'm doing so. I can't because I created it with a Google account (an old email I owned and used to use on Google's account was auto-attached, however I lack that email now so I can't do anything I need to in order to rid myself of the account)

 

[handoferis]

who cares about a shit website?

 

[Deleted member 1982]

Always was like this. Saddest thing is that for the longest of times they received absolutely zero from it. But now that you can earn money by posting goyslop on every single plattform, perhaps >reddit follows eventually too. At least some must be betting on this.

 

[LiraTirsoCaduceo]

Just don't use that site, why are you surprised about its frontpage? It's always been like this, that's why I left. When I managed to start getting top posts regularly on that site I realized how shit it was, made you talk like a passive agressive retard in order to get any engagement on your posts, and even then the engagement you got was all circlejerking.
The frontpage of >reddit is like a worse version of 4chan, because at least 4chan doesn't have that carcinogenic voting system.

 

[McGovern '72!]

Just don't use that site, why are you surprised about its frontpage?

I mean, I'm not really surprised about the frontpage, I'm more surprised about the more niche spaces, where somehow everything is still just posted by a handful of users. It shouldn't surprise me at all coming from that steaming trashfire of a "social media" site, but I can't help but get this weird feeling from it, like I'm the faggot from the Truman Show.

But sadly I've now come to the painful realization that anything related to >reddit, even hating on >reddit, makes you >reddit and therefore undeserving of life. I will now retreat to a Himalayan monastery and learn the ancient art of "good posting".

 

[MindControlBoxer]

Hey guys he doesnt like >reddit lets all bow down and give him a sloppy handytug to congratulate him for the fact that he is himself


‐----------------------
Most of >reddit traffic are bots

 

[幽邃森林]

You've discovered why forums using the upvotes/downvote system end up stale.

Subreddit content and moderators were always dominated by a small clique of users. This was uncovered years ago.

That's why I prefer sites like Agora. Actual forums provide actual conversations. It's a shame though that >reddit is killing all the other traditional forums.

 

[silktrader]

the more i look at the big social media, the more i realize of a few key points any social media site needs if they dont want to go to shit

1. no/very limited reaction system
2. some form of gatekeeping
3. complete political neutrality

the first point is obvious. if youre not incentivized to post a specific thing to farm points then you'll instead just say whats on your mind. the second point will have people whining about sweaty nerds who take their niche websites too seriously but the same people will turn around and complain about how everything on the internet seems the same so their opinion is invalid. everyone must be involved in everything so now nothing means anything. goth used to be an actual subculture now its just attention starved parasites flaunting their black makeup and clothes on tiktok. countless hobby sites (especially tech) will get flooded with people who dont know what theyre doing and refuse to admit this. theres countless more examples. the third does not mean everyone is a centrist, rather that anyone can say whatever unfiltered dogshit opinion they have on politics and not be witch-hunted. i guarantee you on any other site no_chill or picklemen wouldve been suspended or gotten some dox/death threats or whatever. at least here people just call them a fag and move on with their lives.

 

[Ardea]

It's one of the most heavily censored and propagandized platforms on Earth. To a greater extent than most because the entire userbase participates in the censorship. All interactions are either designed to farm karma points or boil down to simple, "call-and-response" stuff. Try saying anything that deviates one iota from the approved message and they'll do everything they can to limit your ability to post/comment. They're rabid with it. They've even got (or at least they had, might be different now) addons that let them assess your account in seconds and see if you hold any doubleplus-ungood opinions.

It used to have some half decent subs in it, but almost all are either banned or have been assimilated. The admins will manually replace the mod team with compliant soys, and that's the death of the sub. There is a reason >reddit users are the least valuable social media users. Like @Digital Cheese said, there isn't even any value in gaming them. They're easy to troll and whip up into a frenzy, but it's so easy that it isn't that satisfying.

But honestly the less said about that shitheap of a website, the better. They don't seem to think much of this place either. It's heckin' problematic.

 

[Punp]

If I ever get a way to delete my >reddit account

https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite enjoy. You run the JS to delete all your comments with overwrites and then erase your account from the settings.

---

Hoo boy. Here goes:

You spotted the obivous-It's an automated psyop
Yes, a lot of content is recycled and reposted and circlejerked over, but you haven't reached the bottom of how. It's funny that you mentioned Gallowboob - the account is run by multiple people who take the most popular content and repost it. It's a content farm. Why? Because with enough goodboypoints (upvotes) your account gets statistically more valuable and 'trusted'. This makes it more valuable for advertising purposes, but also valuable as a media/entertainment asset.

Specifically the account ended up being invited to moderate multiple subreddits because of the username recognition. You can imagine how having moderation power over major subreddits is valuable - especially if you want to remove posts claiming that your account is reposting content.

These sorts of accounts became botted. The site and users are constantly forgetting the previous posts which means there's a huge database of posts and a record of how they performed. Not only can you just repost content and be guaranteed success, but you can also go back into old posts, take the top three upvoted comments and repost them on someone else's repost.

Politik
The website is also a battleground for any politically-affiliated bot, like the Shrillary and Orangeman bots from that election cycle. A lot of these are Indians in warehouses in Bangladesh, Rice farmers in China, or Russians in gulags, who use recycled arguments to target the badthink. They go around upvoting things, reposting, commenting and generally acting like real humans until they're required to turn up to a raid to downvote a badthink post or to "casually respond" to a negative opinion. This is why you'll sometimes see a comment section bobbing along with a general noise of upvotes and downvotes until it suddenly isn't and the comments are either 100+ or 100-.

Anyone who has read the primer on deadinternet will note that there are bots, and there are people who see the majority of bots and become bots to fit in. The voting system is ideal for manufacturing conformity, so all you need to do is get a large enough base of 'general opinion' under way.

Celebrities
The site used to be used for "AMA" (ask me anything) interviews with celebrities, where someone promoting their recent film would go to the head office and answer questions selected from the comments. These would usually follow the pattern of an intern asking a question in the comments masqueraded as a user, then the celebrity would answer that question. Sometimes if the celebs didn't have a tardwrangler they'd accidentally interact with the public and get into fights.

You don't need to look further than Woody Harrelson's Rampart fiasco for a source on that one.

Advertising
The advertising is a fucking cancer on that site. I'm not talking about the paid ads either. They will literally join subreddits and masquerade as "just another user" talking about the game they made "all on their own", then """someone""" will turn up in the comments and say "hi what's your game called? Are you going to sell it?" then they'll drop a link, conveniently showing where to buy it.

These posts are usually masqueraded as information for the community and explain how they made their game. It has one purpose - to sell the game to the soy consumers.

This happens again and again with Kickstarters, products and political ideology.

The Tencent Website
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned that it's at least partially owned by Tencent, a Chinese company. I needn't elaborate on why it might have problems to have the main brain input for a bunch of people in the West to be owned by a country that is unofficially at war with them, or that anyone can make an account on the site and vote anonymously on public discourse.

It's a dead site
For all intents and purposes, it's a dead site. The users who aren't bots act like bots, the posts are constantly forgotten and the 'community' is transitory. Reading anything there is basically subjecting yourself to a mental culture war in no man's land.

Source for all of this: It came to me in a dream

 

[Punp]

TL;DR Yes, it's a shithole of recycled content and the users do it for a mixture of political, commercial and social power.

 

[Digital Cheese]

https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite enjoy. You run the JS to delete all your comments with overwrites and then erase your account from the settings.

oh thanks lol.

i will note for the account erasement, i physically can't do that. i never added an actual password, so i have to login EVERYTIME via Google right? They auto-added my outlook email which is now inaccessible. However, since I can't use that email, I can't create the >reddit account password then delete the account. Yet they require your >reddit account to have a password to delete it. Meaning I can't change my email or anything, can't delete account, and a few other things which require this. Essentially, I'm fucked tho I can clear every single last-post out, then if or when I delete my Google account, I'll be unable to access my >reddit account + the few remaining posts would be fully gone.

 

[Adruss]

I know this proves I'm a soyjak fucking bastard but I was browsing the >reddit front page a little while earlier and then suddenly got a weird feeling from a lot of the posts. So I check the users and check where they've been posting and holy fuck! I thought I was addicted to online but these faggots post a neverending stream of slop on an hourly basis. These are people whose existences must be dedicated to nothing but scraping the internet for what little original content there is and shitting it out onto random >reddit subs. And even then they just repost things posted by other redditors who do this same thing.

Well, everybody knows that the >reddit front page is filled with a bunch of karmawhores (like gallowb00b), but what no one talks about is how this shit applies to literally every single subreddit. 90% of them are dominated by cliques of 2-5 users who spam shit onto >reddit constantly. And I really mean 90% of them, too: everything from pictures to femcels to fetish porn is dominated by localized cliques of >reddit-addicted weirdos. I could pull up some screenshots but honestly I'm too fucking lazy and you can just see this for yourself. It's weird and makes the "JFK didn't kill himself" part of my brain tingle in a bad way. You guys are probably gonna love pseud larping about it tho.

You're not wrong but there are niche subs too where you can get answers to questions fairly quickly. Basically I use >reddit as a better google. Now if you get your politics from this site you a retard no question

 

[Chuffed]

i will note for the account erasement... can't delete account, and a few other things which require this. ....I can clear every single last-post out, then if or when I delete my Google....

Eh, spend 5 minutes with coffee in hand, delete what you can (posts with the most meat or anything tied to you saying something a human would say; forget the memes), and move on with life.

 

[Digital Cheese]

Eh, spend 5 minutes with coffee in hand, delete what you can (posts with the most meat or anything tied to you saying something a human would say; forget the memes), and move on with life.

Thats pretty much what I've done lol. I think theres a singular 9mo old post still up, but only because it was something actually important and in a sub with so little activity that it's likely still one of the newest 50 or 100 posts.

 

[Voicedrew]

It was like this back on r/okbuddybaka when I was a regular. The circle of frequent posters was so small that I could make a youtube video about it.

 

[Punp]

It was like this back on r/okbuddybaka when I was a regular. The circle of frequent posters was so small that I could make a youtube video about it.

That's really sweet. I love when little groups can have in-jokes about their members and they celebrate it by carving it in digital stone.

 

[SolidStateSurvivor]

My local town's sub is cartelized in the sense that it's turned into nothing more than a thinly veiled DNC political activist sub with the mods in on it. It's fucking trash, I want to go on there to find local events or maybe (just maybe) even connect with some new people but instead it's just rage bait articles posted ad nauseam by the same few people.

 

[alix]

My local town's sub is cartelized in the sense that it's turned into nothing more than a thinly veiled DNC political activist sub with the mods in on it. It's fucking trash, I want to go on there to find local events or maybe (just maybe) even connect with some new people but instead it's just rage bait articles posted ad nauseam by the same few people.

Thinly veiled? Pretty much every big sub's posts are "Look guys!!! The GOP did something bad! Let's all circlejerk over our fantasies of them getting smited by the light of science!! (it can't be the light of God because christianism is an evil sexist fascist religion and that means less updoots)". I'm not even republican but for God's sake do something with your life.

The reason behind all of this is that the average redditors have always seen themselves as unique. They think they're better than every social media so they try to make their own culture (updoot, hecking, wholesome 100, doge, Elon Musk...) when they're actually the exact same as the others. So yeah, the >reddit hivemind is real because redditors want it to be. They see all of >reddit as "we", and thus only like and post what "they" all want so see. Some more steps later, and you have a cartelized >reddit sub where they rot away posting and circlejerking over how what they like is good and what they don't is bad in hope of gaining some upvotes. Even the subs which didn't take themselves "seriously", such as r/Gamingcirclejerk ended up turning into an unironic circlejerk.