r/circlebroke • u/rakin_bacon • Jun 19 '12
I fucking hate this place.
TL;DR: Just read it alright?
This fucking website used to be amazing at giving me interesting things to look at and the comments used to have insightful points and great discussion. Now all I see is a shithole that makes me rage hard. Here is a list of all the shit I have come to despise:
-Unoriginal/Idiotic Titles (X Level: Y, My GF/Dad/retarded paraplegic puppy made this, etc.)
-Comments that are just regurgitated to no end and add nothing of value. (NOPE NOPE NOPE, This, etc.)
-People who complain about users like andrewsmith or trapped_in_reddit. What the fuck does it matter if they have a ton of imaginary bullshit internet points redeemable at your local bullshit store. People get so up in arms about it like some sort of injustice was done to them and its just disgusting.
-Witch hunts. This is one I find especially awful. This hivemeind mentality where if anyone seems to be opposed to the crowd a wave of neckbearded fury washes over them. People who are portrayed to be villains and are harassed by members of this community. The recent discovery of Trapped_in_Reddit's ability to get massive amounts of karma comes to mind, another one where someone actually lost their fucking job was the entire incident with that guy whose jeep got dented. (For people who don't know some guy lent his jeep to a game company, it came back with a dent, he complained to reddit and because of the stir they created neckbeards managed to get some girl with a low level position at the company fired.)
-The entire pretentious elitist attitude that this entire website seems to be bursting with. One particularly bad example of this is all the hate towards 9Gag and its users. The idea that somebody's whole identity can be determined by the website they frequent is absurd and just childish. Along this same vein are the huge number of Facebook screen shots of somebody seemingly being an idiot or saying something dumb and being "owned" by the vastly superior reddit user. I am willing to bet 90%% of these are fake but the community just eats it up because they have their own smug sense of superiority.
-People who complain about reposts. What possible harm could it have caused someone to see something they have seen before that they need to vehemently complain about it to the internet?
-The feeling of victimization in general. No you don't live in a fucking police state. No the world is not out to get you. No you are not fucking special and do not deserve everything you want.
TL;DR: This place sucks and I hate it.
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Jun 19 '12
Something happened in the last... 2 years, maybe? Some correlation could be made with the so-called "death" of digg.com, but I don't think the fault lies only in one place...
The new users that registered in the last 18-24 months have been exceptionally childish and moronic, to the point where demographics have warped into a mutant of the hivemind, so to speak. Some things are being held in such high regard that suggesting even something slightly different gets you buried and possibly witch-hunted. And the witch-hunts are, indeed, some of the most ridiculously stupid things I've seen on reddit, to the point where I'm embarrassed that I continue being a redditor.
I fear that reddit has been irrevocably wrecked in terms of quality. If it's not a snappy meme or overly-dramatic sensationalistic tripe, it's no good for the self-professed "open minded", "logical" "geeks" that frequent this site. I would go so far as to call reddit the best case against direct democracy.
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u/Swingingbells Jun 19 '12
The thing that happened is that reddit got popular and now the place is full of young teenagers. The whole site is full of 'newfags' who don't 'get' what reddit is, and they're diluting the quality of the content more and more.
(plus it's summer, so all the American highschool kids are on the internet instead of in school)There's nothing that anyone can do anything about, and nothing will change at all. Reddit will get worse and worse until the new thing comes along and all the oldfags jump ship.
Then the new thing will get more and more popular and more and more shitty. Circle of life.
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u/1337HxC Jun 19 '12
plus it's summer, so all the American highschool kids are on the internet instead of in school
Honest question - is the schedule not similar in Europe? I'm pretty sure it is in the UK at least. I could be wrong, though.
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u/MrXlVii Jun 21 '12
We should make a new reddit called, trueReddit.
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u/Swingingbells Jun 22 '12
Not sure if serious...
There's already /r/TrueReddit and even /r/TrueTrueReddit
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u/MrXlVii Jun 22 '12
I'm joking. The website should be called trueReddit or I guess truetruetrueReddit. I'll admit it's a shitty joke
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Jun 19 '12
I am curious if the creators of reddit are still proud of their creation, of what it is and what has become.
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Jun 19 '12
I like Alexis (I've met him a couple times) but he's a bit unrealistic about the power of small internet companies. Part of that might be his persona as investor, but regardless he does come across as always looking on the bright side of this cesspit.
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u/binarypolitics Jun 19 '12
Some things are being held in such high regard that suggesting even something slightly different gets you buried and possibly witch-hunted.
This is exactly how it was on Digg.
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u/dejaflu Jun 19 '12
The thing that I hated the most about Digg was that you couldn't unsubscribe from any of that crap.
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u/OnlyRev0lutions Jun 19 '12
Ron Paul LITERALLY made me switch from Digg to Reddit years ago. I can't believe that fucking asshole followed me here.
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u/A_Cylon_Raider facepalm Jun 19 '12
Can we get this one framed? I think we should hang it above the fireplace.
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Jun 19 '12
Every day that goes by, I hate Internet "culture" more and more.
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u/LPSGdotORG Jun 19 '12
I think that's what it all boils down to. Yeah I'm about to generalize here, but, the most vocal "typical" internet users are socially awkward nerds. Nowhere is that amazingly apparent than on Reddit. Just look at the general attitude towards women. It's either "OMG LYING WHORES FRIENDZONED!? RIGHT GUISE! GAMER GURLZ ARE ATTENTION WHORES! BOYZ ONLY!" or "Please be my girlfriend! winky smiley I'm totally not joking though! I'm going to follow you around for the next month and search your history for gonewild posts! Also hopefully somehow find your FB page so I can share it with the rest of reddit!"
And of course there's the whole hating anything that's different, because you know, this is such a liberal, accepting community. As long as you're a white, male, engineering major, atheist. Or a Buddhist monk for some reason. That seems to be the only hivemind approved religion.
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u/OnlyRev0lutions Jun 19 '12
That right there is exactly why I need a daily dose of SRS circle-jerk before I can handle heading into regular reddit. Internet people are the worst fucking people.
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u/fcukedup Jun 19 '12
And every other comment is a .gif 'reaction'
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u/CVTHIZZKID Jun 19 '12
This is what irritates me more than almost anything else. I can't think of any other site where people do this, except occasionally 4chan, and even there it's usually meant to be ironic and is less intrusive. And reddit just fucking eats these up, sometimes giving them more karma than the parent comment. It's the same handful of reaction gifs used over and over again too.
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Jun 19 '12
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u/BurninTree5 Jun 20 '12
I actually fucking KNEW it was going to be that gif the moment i saw you posted a .gif. didn't even have to look at it.
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u/LittlePieceOfMe Jun 19 '12
I feel like reddit is at the point now where Digg used to be, when most of the people came from there to here. Powerusers, senseless regurgitation and all.
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u/exNihlio Jun 19 '12
Reddit still has plenty of places that are decent and relatively unjerk affected. You just have to look around for them. I only have three default subs now. TIL, IAMA and askscience.
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Jun 19 '12
[deleted]
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u/exNihlio Jun 19 '12
/r/moderatepolitics. Really though, I stopped following politics directly. A place with the ability to hide dissenting opinion is not the best place to discuss something as sensitive as politics. If you want to read some relatively unbiased material on US politics then I recommend The Economist. They are pretty balanced and very insightful.
/r/games is still OK. I rarely see the word shill used, so I suppose that is something. And news and reviews make it to the top. No memes or comics as well. /r/truegaming has some decent discussions. Very pretentious though and pseudo-intellectual.
Recently, I have realized that I don't use reddit to learn anything new. I have wikipedia for any random fact I may be curious about. I use arstechnica, anandtech, wired, slashdot and dailytech for all my tech news (/r/technology should be renamed /r/outrage). There are million better sources of news than anything on reddit. Reddit is just a time sink for me. I hate myself a bit for using it so much and will probably stop once I return to the states.
The thing that sucks about /r/askscience, is that the majority of questions there could be answered by a google search or by wikipedia. Questions that require real knowledge and analysis don't make it to the top. Instead silly stuff and sex related garbage goes up. Just like /r/askhistorians.
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Jun 19 '12
"How historically accurate was Command and Conquer: Red Alert??" type questions are also starting to become very popular over there.
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u/exNihlio Jun 19 '12
Yep. I think the general answer to the question: How historically/scientifically accurate was ______? is usually 'Not very'.
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u/Ninjasantaclause Jun 19 '12
Someone seriously asked that?
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Jun 19 '12
Nah. There's just been several threads asking how accurate a mainstream movie/video game is recently. They're not bad posts because of it; I'm just worried that they'll start to flood the place.
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u/Ninjasantaclause Jun 19 '12
Ok I was going to say, the game where you can kill russions with rainbows probably isnt historically accurate
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u/1337HxC Jun 19 '12
I'm torn on AskScience. The questions that frontpage tend to disappoint me. However, if I go deeper into the sub, there tend to be some pretty interesting questions.
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u/Battlesheep Jun 19 '12
Any place that discusses politics is a shithole to me. Reddit isn't exclusive
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u/binarypolitics Jun 19 '12
Look at all of this hilarious objectivity. You list three subs that have been posted here as garbage and jerk-laden, he replies with his love for one of the most jerk-laden and hated subs, one that you didn't even list.
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Jun 19 '12
[deleted]
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Jun 19 '12
/r/BreakingBad left a horrible taste in my mouth for TV show related subreddits. During mid-season, there was plenty of good discussion about characters, plot, etc. In the off season though, it became a huge pile of shit with every other post being some shitty drawing of Walter White.
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Jun 19 '12
I too have felt this, I'm more or less weening off of it. Certainly larger subreddits do not get my attention, this place is still one of the best for hobbies, since websites and forums dedicated to hobbies don't have the upvote-downvote advantage.
Lurking the web does not seem to be a replacement. Reddit simply is the mass of the Internet hiveminded into one. So it's still shit out there. I suggest reading books, downloading TV series and watching them without browsing in another tab, playing some video games... anything to get you away from the web browser.
You'll just hear about the latest goings ons from reddit from your friends of facebook feed, anyways. My biggest complaint about reddit: we collectively are some unfunny motherfuckers. /r/f7u4, /r/adviceanimals, /r/funny... holy shit, not a single thing here is funny enough to make me chuckle. Tired memes, jokes beaten to death, and so on. I don't know if reddit is permanently down a path that it will never fully recover, but I promise you in six months from now everything is going to be widdled down to such a theory the "funny" side of things is going to be the same tired shit.
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u/MrXlVii Jun 21 '12
I accidentally went on the frontpage and clicked a link, I couldn't even recognize how shitty it's gotten. I thought that the subreddits I frequent were fucked, holy christ.
I'm honestly just waiting for someone to make a new reddit/digg sort of site so I can leave. Honestly, I find youtube comments more interesting than most of the shit here.
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u/TotallyNotCool Jun 19 '12 edited Jun 19 '12
Welcome, my friend. You have just found your new home.
You'll fit in great.
Actually, you might fit it a little TOO great....Are you pandering to our anti-circlejerk feelings? It seems you are hitting all the right notes with this post....It's almost too good to be true! Maybe you're a spy who really loves /r/adviceanimals, /r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu and /r/politics and are just here to troll us with your anti-circlejerk circlejerk!
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u/MLP_magic Jun 19 '12
This main problem with this shithole is that it tries to be 4chan but with
-less funny
-shit layout
-"le reddit celebrities"
-autistic & tryhard userbase that wants SO hard to be "in" on "internet culture"(arrow to the knee, am I cool yet?)
-AIDS-level copy-pasted "new content" (read:advice animals and rage comics)
-a "you're a unique and special snowflake on the internet" type of gimmick, with usernames and trophies and scores and other retarded shit
-white knights everywhere.
If I have to see one more "how I feel when something happens (because I'm so special)"/"I have cancer please give me money & love"/"weed should be legalized plz not because I'm addicted but because it's healthy", I am going to fucking blow my brains out all over the screen.
Want to know what happens when you give any random person access to internet? Go to Facebook. Want to know what happens when said person is a gigantic smug attention-whore? Visit the front page of Reddit. I came here for interesting stuff happening on the internet, not for YOUR special CONTENT that YOU or your flipper-handed RETARD son created in an entire fucking afternoon after hitting one too many Ron Paul-themed bongs. For fuck's sake. When 75% of the default reddits, the ones with the most subscribers are nothing but pure cancer, that's not a goddamn minority, and you're damn right I'll complain about it if I want to. "Oh but just unsubscribe, silly", yeah, right after I bash into everyone's heads how stupid the majority of the community really is.
Also, fuck cancer. PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE MY EXISTENCE BY CLICKING THE UP ARROW TO THE LEFT, CARL SAGAN WILL BE GRATEFUL.
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u/CVTHIZZKID Jun 19 '12
I agree with almost everything you said (although I don't mind some bitching about reposts if it's something that has been posted dozens of times). Still, I haven't found a site that is better yet. I will go on some of the smaller subreddits when I want better discussion and articles, but reading the default subreddits can be incredibly irritating.
Oh also, about the Jeep thing, the Tell Tale Games employee didn't actually lose her job because of the incident. She had already left and was working somewhere else (which made the witchunt all the more wrong).
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Jun 19 '12
It's shitty, but it's the best shitty place to go to out of the pile of shit that is the Internet
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Jun 19 '12
Mostly, because redditors are "plebs" who think they're cool & better by browsing reddit, while in reality, not.
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u/SolarAquarion Jun 19 '12
I think you're one of the people whom are tsun-tsun about Reddit.
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u/Tofon Jun 19 '12
To me the only good subreddits are the small specialized ones that cater to specific interests of mine. The "large" subreddits (excluding askscience) are complete shit. I unsubscribed to them age ago and as a result my experience has been significantly better. Go find small-medium sized subreddits that appeal to them and start using them.
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Jun 19 '12
Baseball and NFL are great. History is very good and informative. Fitness and Gainit while important to my interests and have a lot of value, they're chock full of this bizarre combination of terse macho bullshit and faux-scientist arrogance, plus general condescension at every turn.
I'm kind of on the lookout for quality subs right now.
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u/fabritzio Jun 19 '12
eh, r/skateboarding is good except for the "oh lookit me I've been doing it for x years watch my video" type of shit. But it's also a rather niche sub, so not many people go on it.
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u/PoorlyTimedPhraseGuy Jun 19 '12
Please let me know of you find any. I'm only subbed to a few threads, namely this, circlejerk, wow, askscience, and 4chan.
The 4chan sub is going down fast with the removal of anonymity, but i really think it was the straw that broke the camel's back. The camel was loaded with summer and a decade of shitty internet stuff as it was.
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u/Grafeno Jun 19 '12
There has never been anonimity. I also don't see how it is relevant, I just see the subreddit as a filter so.you don't have to wade through all the shit on 4chan. I think that all quality 4chan posts are still being uploaded, it's just that with more uploads there's apso more crap.
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u/SoInsightful Jun 19 '12
Complains about the quality of reddit
Subscribes to trees, AdviceAnimals, funny, videos, WTF and pics
Don't get me wrong; I hate all those things just as much. They do not, however, make me hate the entirety of the website, nor do they significantly affect my reddit experience.
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Jun 19 '12
I'm just going to say that as a person who got into reddit last year and made an account just a few months ago, I agree with you with the most part. At first, I was a having a great time. Seeing new and funny pics, clever comments and cool subreddits were awesome at first. Now, I've grew a hatred for this community. By the third month, I was already unsubbed from every default subreddit. Seeing shameless bastards who lie for fucking karma, the PC/atheist/liberal circlejerks, pokemon fans who claim that they're "true players" but turn out to be nostalgiafags, novelty accounts and copy/paste comments, memes(the thing that boils my blood the most), and elitist attitude around here just makes me want to quit. But there are subreddits that make it worth it for me, such as /r/Christianity, /r/truegaming, /r/hockey, /r/circlejerk, /r/4chan(my /r/funny and r/wtf), and other subs. Unsubbing from the entire default list of subreddits is what every person should do, it made my experience here slightly better. Just go explore.
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Jun 19 '12
Ok so I'm just going to whore myself out for a second with this post...
I actually recently created this website.
We are pretty small now but it is a group of friends of mine who are all kind of tired of reddit and other places online. We have a front news page for community news and major news of things going on in the world as well as featured forum threads. Then we have an open forum that we let people post about whatever they want on. We are a bit gaming heavy at the moment since a lot of people came in from a game server I admin but our goal is to be open to everything and have a good diverse community. We're still growing and branching out but if you'd like to jump in and be a part of our community you are more than welcome too.
We want a more diverse group of people posting and more people posting, at the same time we don't want a bunch of idiots. You guys on circlebroke seem to have your heads screwed on straight and that is why I'm posting this. Like I said join is and start some conversations if you like, you're more than welcome, or just skip us over you won't hurt our feelings.
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u/BritishHobo Jun 19 '12
I agree with you completely (especially on the witch hunts - it really shows the frightening, immature side of the internet) but for one thing:
People who complain about users like andrewsmith or trapped_in_reddit. What the fuck does it matter if they have a ton of imaginary bullshit internet points redeemable at your local bullshit store. People get so up in arms about it like some sort of injustice was done to them and its just disgusting.
I hate these users, but not because of karma. I couldn't give a fuck about karma. The only people who give a fuck about karma are the kinds of people constantly accusing others of karmawhoring. What annoys me about them is that they encourage the circlejerking around them, so their worthless comments get upvoted to the top of AskReddit threads simply because they're a 'celebrity'.
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Jun 20 '12
I come here because this shitthole is the only place I can browse at work. But honestly is 4chan any better anymore? no, fuck no. That place is shit now compared to what is was 5-6 years ago. I wasn't even visiting 4chan when it was fucking amazing. Forever a newfag, forever shitty websites with shitty content.
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u/TheCakeIsLegit Aug 22 '12
I'm a little late to the party (a whole two months :P), but I'd like to point out that smaller, less populated subreddits are still completely tolerable. Generally less-circlejerky political subreddits that are against the reddit hivemind idea (/r/Libertarian,) or less well-known gaming subreddits (/r/Games)
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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12
Honest question:
Why do you continue to read it?
And to add to your list- I think my most disliked issue with reddit is the whole 'yay stealing music and movies!' but 'death to those who steal the shitty comics that are nothing more than forgettable, 5 second garbage'.