What is the worst mainstream website and why?

[dorgon]

twitter and tiktok are by far the worst social media websites. Twitter is pretty obvious (virtue signalling and terribly toxic terminally online communities) and tiktok because it destroys your attention span and has garbage fast food content. Tik tok is also owned by the chinese..... >reddit is also horrible because of the circlejerk nonsense which goes on there. i used to like 4chan but now it's infested with feds.


edit: discord is also pretty bad because of the groomers and stuff too.

 

[Taikon777]

Google.com.
Which we could call the >reddit for the whole world because that decided what you can even find or not.
Old google was really neat as a research tool, but man, it seems to find not only just news articles but after a while the limited results begin to loop as well.

I would be okay to have a early 2010s google good search engine. The alternative search engines suck.

 

[wearyinternettraveler]

>reddit gets a bad rap because the default subs are peak normienet and your brain will rot out your skull if you look too long, however there are a lot of good subs that focus on real world shit like /r/personalfinance which has helped me.

4chan is mostly sad for me because what it was is gone and it's never, ever going to come back. It's a bitter feeling so I try not to think about it, but I may write an effortpost about it later. I blame the merger between the Internet and real life (see: politics post-2015) but I will get to this later.

I don't think people my age use instagram anymore but it seemed like the first really gross app that damaged the mental health of teenagers. It still felt kind of self-contained though,

I don't even know what pintrest is but they fuck with my search results so fuck 'em.

Facebook is boomerlicious, to paraphrase Terry Davis. I don't know anyone under 45 who uses it. Using it to sign up for messenger/instagram/tinder/whatever doesn't count.

Youtube is probably the only one here I like since it was something I sort of grew up with. It definitely got worse but I don't think it got worse at a faster rate than anything else, and it was, at one point, something that approached good.

Tumblr used to be synonymous with crazy people but now it's kind of a husk of its former self, from what I've heard.

Discord is good for keeping up with people you know in meatspace but outside of that it's a fucking death trap. I'd have half a mind to beat my kid if I ever caught them using it; it'd be better than what's waiting for them through that screen. The movement of knowledge off of sites like stackexchange and >reddit (which are single points of failure but could at least be parsed by search engines) to discord enclaves is going to destroy homebrew communities once discord dies.

Twitter is ground zero of the Internet/real life merge. A lot of people will say 4chan and Trump was when the veil got pierced, but it wouldn't have been as bad without twitter priming everyone. I remember around 2011-2012 how cool I thought it was that you could tweet your vote to American Idol. Remember the whole "tumblrinaction" shit that was popular around 2014-2015? That shit walked so twitter could run. Witness checkmarks and independent fact checkers melting the fuck down over some deranged maniac buying their stomping ground. I hope it crashes and burns, the amount of damage this fucking microblogging site, which isn't even technically interesting like youtube, has caused is immeasurable. Jack should have been a watchmaker but that would require him to cultivate a core competency.

As tumblr is to twitter, instagram is to tiktok. It distills the hyperattentive microposting mindrape pioneered by instagram. Have you ever seen someone getting sucked into their phone before your very eyes? It's horrifying. I will say that you can get real fuckin based recommendations real fuckin fast on that app, which reminds me of the old days. I've heard that douyin (the Chinese version) promotes STEM occupations to kids while western kids get a feed full of twerk compilations. I don't know if that's true but it wouldn't surprise me. I think that out of all of these, tiktok is the one that would be "best" if consumed by a responsible adult, just by how scary good its recommendation algorithm is.

 

[elia925-6]

Pinterest? Is this the site of over 50s woman who likes home decor, dont see a problem in that

Are.na for me is pinterest but for more artsy people. Not a bad website though.

 

[Silence The Mothers Song]

I think Tiktok and Twitter are the worst, mostly because kids flock there and rot their brains on the endless loop of garbage content.

 

[ion]

>reddit
I've never really been a >reddit user, I've been on >reddit since it's the place people seem to host hobby wikis and do QnAs now. I think this sort of centralisaion, >reddit's culture aside, is harmful for the internet. small wikis have their place and it isn't all on reddit.com

4chan
The devil I know is horrific. it feels like the 4chan I knew is drowned in consumer electronics enthusiasts, far-right politics, and porn addicts. I can sort of understand wanting to "keep up with the jonses" but memorising clockspeeds dosen't make you l33t. You can still have fun there if the jannies happen to moderate well but they never do. The best time i've had on 4chan was one night at 3am when a new jannie killed all the porn threads on /b/, great shit and it died as soon as the burgers woke up. I've stopped going there.

tumblr
Sure it was where alot of intersectional politics started gaining traction, but it was an effective containment zone. Networking seems really convoluted too so it kinds of kept things from getting as insane as quickly. Everyone heard "tumblr" and rightfully discarded what came next. I've heard it has it's own share of tiny schitzo blogs that are still kicking and I respect that tbh. Tried it on a friends reccomendation, not for me.

twitter
I think twitter took the space tumblr filled but since it does networking better AND it was used primarily by public figures it was like throwing gasoline on a fire.

tiktok
zoomer shit, the algo isn't really that good. It's just a mindless stream of innofensive drivil ment to eat your time. Shilling for china is unironically fun in tiktok though since you can bait responses easily and the mods always favor you.

youtube
new tv

discord
IIRC chatrooms were always associated associated with the risk of getting groomed. I think that discord just stands out in the west because
A. it's big
B. the mods are comically retarded so nobody liked them

 

[ion]

I wonder what's the worst subreddit.

r/gamingcirclejerk is probabkly up there. The whole point of the subreddit is making fun of people which brew a very toxic environment.

>toxic
let me guess, you're a humourless gamer

 

[manpaint]

>toxic
let me guess, you're a humourless gamer

I mean, any environment where people from group A make fun of group B can rapdly become toxic. It is also a shining example of the hivemind mindset and 2D thinking of reddit.

Also, I cannot be a humourless gamer since this would require me to be a gamer. I have dropped this title way back in 2016 when the winds changed. I am not sure how any sane individual would call themselve a gamer in the current climate.

 

[LostintheCycle]

I mean, any environment where people from group A make fun of group B can rapdly become toxic. It is also a shining example of the hivemind mindset and 2D thinking of reddit.

Also, I cannot be a humourless gamer since this would require me to be a gamer. I have dropped this title way back in 2016 when the winds changed. I am not sure how any sane individual would call themselve a gamer in the current climate.

 

[Indigo Wizard]

>reddit is the worst because Twitter is recognized for what it is, but somehow >reddit keeps the same image it's had for a long time, like Leatherface wearing a skin, while being the exact same degree of garbage fire progressivism that Twitter is, if not worse. If there's a shadow community you can find in there somewhere, it's likely to be full of people grumbling darkly about Jews and posting memes that are so niche that only the community knows them.

 

[manpaint]

View attachment 42689

View attachment 42690

No you are mistaken. I am a software archivist - a work that some times involve archiving video games. I understand your confusion as both look the same to the untrained eye.

 

[Virgiltosh]

Guess nobody either hates, or uses Pinterest. I'm gonna say the second.

 

[niuenso]

So, out of these, I never tried or engaged with TikTok and I never visited 4chan.
I did try and use all the others to soem extent.

The one I think is the least harmful is probably pinterest primarily because it's the least social ot the bunch. And it doesn't really pushes for user to suer interactions. It's kinda like are.na in a way. You interact with the content and the content is not really user generated because i'd say it's 90% just content grabbed from the web.

The one i'm disappointed with the most is youtube. Because i think it's the one that could have the biggest positive impact and insted the knobs are all turned to max profit and they push the worst quality content possible to people. But it's also filled with amazing content that is interesting and engaging and it's a shame that one has to fight against the algo more and more.

Discord is an odd choice because it can be used as a tool for small comunities and so I don't even consider it a social platform.

The worst one i'd say it's probably facebook. And that's because it also enables IG to stay alive. And it has massive reach. Twitter is a cesspool but it also has a way smaller audience than we might think.

 

[PizzaW0lf]

Also, I cannot be a humourless gamer since this would require me to be a gamer. I have dropped this title way back in 2016 when the winds changed. I am not sure how any sane individual would call themselve a gamer in the current climate.

So to all gamer chads, what have you been playing in the last year or so?

 

[manpaint]

So to all gamer chads, what have you been playing in the last year or so?

View attachment 42922

I am not extremly well versed in meme culture, but from what I gather, calling yourself a "chad" is like the equivalent of a r*dditor calling themselves intelligent.

Not a very wise move.

 

[RisingThumb]

I voted YouTube.

It's a social media that's very very easy to rationalise into your life(after all the others are done and dumped on a much easier basis).
With YouTube you have content that genuinely provides value.
AND A LOT OF CONTENT THAT PROVIDES NO VALUE BUT WILL WASTE MORE TIME THAN ANY OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM. It combines long videos, attention-destroying techniques, comment sections, notifications, infinite scroll, upvote culture and is perpetuated as useful to an insane number of people by its use being normalised to an extreme degree.

Everything else, it's easy to just discard once you understand why it's bad. The only exception I have is Discord, but that's used for talking to friends, messaging people and being in a few online communities(did you guys know piracy is illegal? Completely unrelated)

Compare the content and value of almost any video to that of an equivalent writing, blog post, book etc. You'll find the length of a 10 minute video can be condensed into about 3 paragraphs of actual high value content that can be digested in a minute

 

[manpaint]

I voted YouTube.

It's a social media that's very very easy to rationalise into your life(after all the others are done and dumped on a much easier basis).
With YouTube you have content that genuinely provides value.
AND A LOT OF CONTENT THAT PROVIDES NO VALUE BUT WILL WASTE MORE TIME THAN ANY OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM. It combines long videos, attention-destroying techniques, comment sections, notifications, infinite scroll, upvote culture and is perpetuated as useful to an insane number of people by its use being normalised to an extreme degree.

Everything else, it's easy to just discard once you understand why it's bad. The only exception I have is Discord, but that's used for talking to friends, messaging people and being in a few online communities(did you guys know piracy is illegal? Completely unrelated)

Compare the content and value of almost any video to that of an equivalent writing, blog post, book etc. You'll find the length of a 10 minute video can be condensed into about 3 paragraphs of actual high value content that can be digested in a minute

What distrurb me the most about YouTube is how much of humanity's art is stored on that platform. Last I heard, it was apparently not very sustainable and do not make profit.

I wonder if one day, a point of no return will be crossed and everything will fade away...

 

[SolidStateSurvivor]

With YouTube you have content that genuinely provides value.
AND A LOT OF CONTENT THAT PROVIDES NO VALUE BUT WILL WASTE MORE TIME THAN ANY OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM.

As someone who is currently caught up on the Chris Chan comprehensive history by Geno Samuel I can 100% agree with that

 

[jellen]

>reddit​

It's pretty fine if you just use it for niche interests, each sub is different.

4chan​

I like the chan format quite a bit. I don't know if I've just outgrown the humor or if it's legitimately gotten worse but I've found it to be unusable lately.

Twitter​

I dunno what it is about Twitter that makes everyone extremely insufferable. That being said, it has gotten a lot more bearable for me ever since I started using the block button liberally.

Instagram​

Dunno I never really used it.

Facebook​

Same as Instagram

Tiktok​

I tried downloading it once but it seemed to make my phone slower? Apparently the algorithm is creepy good at detecting what you want to see but that wasn't my experience. Whenever I saw a good tiktok somewhere else on the internet I would track it down on the app and like it hoping to fix my suggestions until I realized how stupid I felt doing this and deleted the app.

Youtube​

As much as Youtube has been trying to ruin their own site I still find myself liking it best. YouTube is used by such a wide variety of people that you can really find anything on it.

Tumblr​

Say what you want about the early days, ever since the porn ban Tumblr has been pretty chill. Everyone who really sucked moved to Twitter. It's also like >reddit in that it's easy to curate your own experience, since there isn't any sort of algorithm and posts come to you chronologically if you set it that way.

Pinterest​

Never used it either.

Discord​

Haven't really used it outside of having a channel that's made up of my irl friends who moved to different parts of the country. For that it's great, but idk how it is otherwise.

 

[LostintheCycle]

For the sake of breaking the mold I want to fling shit at one website I absolutely despise

Wattpad​

I believe Wattpad claims to have 90 million people active a month. It sounded so promising: a website where anyone anywhere can publish a book about whatever they want. But surprise surprise, it's actually a crapfest.. The two categories I mistakenly came to Wattpad for was nonfictional essays, and poetry. I assumed there'd be an underbelly of essay writers on the site but I was very wrong. Instead you'd find romance fiction at the top of nonfiction, the only actual nonfiction you'll find are shy introvert meme compilations, whiny diarys, and tips on how to have BDSM/DDLG sex. Oh, and guides on how to get Wattpad clout.
You can technically find poetry, which astounded me that people were actually writing any until I read some and realized that every wannabe poet there is of the school of Milk and Honey. In case you don't know what that is, its a book beloved by middle-aged divorced women written by Rupi Kaur. It is infamously quotable. Here's a sample of one (1) poem.
he was supposed to be
the first male love of your life
you still search for him
everywhere
- father
Personally I think you are a bad poet if you just write whatever you want without considering poetic elements (what seperates poetry from prose), and then slap on that worn-out 'free-verse' label afterwards. Wattpad is a fantastic training facility for a generation of sellout authors too. The most popular novels are all tropey, horny, lowest-common-denominator genred junk; everything is some rendition of powerful guy and girl who do the sex, and if you're kinky you can have a splash of sci-fi, werewolf, vampire, K-Pop, or whatever else tickles your pickle. The people writing these know what they're doing, and there's money to be made these days from it.
It's certainly not the worst mainstream website but it's pretty sucky, and moreover disappointing, I'll say.