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Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

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Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#121

Post by kaens »

jules wrote: post #117
kaens wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN also has a much stronger focus on entrepreneurship (understandably so). The level of technical competence on HN is very high, and there's way less noise, so if you're a technically competent person with a business side (or if you're just interested in the business side), HN has a plethora of good for you. As you note, the level of technical competence in the subreddits and threads that pertain to technical matters…

> As you note, the level of technical competence in the subreddits and threads that pertain to technical matters is higher on Reddit. Articles and discussions about just about any facet of any field that requires long-studied domain knowledge will have at least one commenter that really knows their stuff and wants to help people understand it. This is exactly what I mean. For example in a discussion about D, Walter B…

Reddit is a bit anti-entrepreneur

Parts of it, certainly. It definitely has a generalized semi-anti-capitalist vibe, and yes, anti-bigco. I don't think too many of those people are against entrepreneurship in the sense of individuals (or small groups thereof) making a living for themselves doing what they are passionate about; I would imagine that the crankiness would tend to arise when an individual or company started going past providing for themselves, to providing for themselves in gross excess at the expense of the livelihoods of other individuals -- possibly many other individuals.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#122

Post by StavrosK »

kaens wrote: post #120
StavrosK wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, it depends though. I think mostly the jokes manage to not offend, and offensive jokes are downvoted. There's not really so much misogyny as bias to side with the submitter. When someone says "my girlfriend cheated on me" everyone goes "dump that bitch/X that Y", but if a woman says "my boyfriend cheated on me", people will again say "dump that SOB". It's not that they're against women, they're against whomev…

I personally don't tend to find those types of jokes very funny, but I think that's mostly because I've heard a lot of them. I think that what you state here absolutely happens, but I think that there's also a good bit of actual nerdy women-are/men-are angst floating around that at least gets interpreted (or is interpretable) as misogyny/misandry. Not as bad as it used to be, and it always gets called out (at least r…

I agree with that, with so many users there are bound to be some of everything. The best you can do is call it out and downvote it.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#123

Post by katovatzschyn »

sounddust wrote: post #90
katovatzschyn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you been there recently? Have you been anywhere else recently? Can you give an example of a community, of comparable magnitude, that is more open minded? I am easy to criticize reddit, popular as it is on HN, but it is a surprising community for its large population, and as you say the smaller parts of it can be very good. One can find all the flaws with a thing that one wishes to but, in the end, if none are…

Have you been anywhere else recently? Can you give an example of a community, of comparable magnitude, that is more open minded? No community is perfect, but I'd say that Metafilter is considerably more tolerant and open to a wide range of opinions on a subject. You can't downvote others if you disagree with them, and baseless attacks are simply deleted by moderators; it forces you to build a well-reasoned argument i…

Metafilter is a great site, I go there often and think every highly of it- but it is at least one order of magnitude smaller than reddit.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#124

Post by TeHCrAzY »

aberkowitz wrote: post #58
revoltingx wrote: post #49

Reddit and its community blows balls. There are churches out there who contribute in much bigger ways and get less publicity. What a bunch of self serving douchebags. I'm sure they contribute online, but what will they do when someone in need approaches them in the street? This kind of behavior is disgusting.

People tend to be fascinated when a system does things it is not created to do. Reddit's primary purpose is to share and comment on links whereas churches are founded to spread goodwill in a community.

I'm pretty sure churches are not founded to spread goodwill in a community.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#125

Post by bhiggins »

tav wrote: post #4

Am I the only person who found Reddit generally quite unpleasant? It really is heart-warming to hear of all the good that those on Reddit have done. But I can't help feel that it's the exact same mob mentality which made me want to leave Reddit in the first place — discussions got extremely polarised very quickly and there seemed to be very little room for reasoned dialogue. The article makes it sound like a good thi…

I find your smug attitude unpleasant.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#126

Post by marknutter »

Marticus wrote: post #62
marknutter wrote: post #45

I actually find reddit to be somewhat nauseating. Call me cynical, but I can't help but think the Reddit community performs every kind act with an air of smug, self-centerdness you often find in creepy church youth groups or after school specials. I started visiting reddit because digg's links started sucking, and now I visit HN primarily because reddit is no longer about good links either. It's a maassive geek circl…

What I don't understand is how exactly it is as you claim it is. My Reddits consist of programming, robotics, science, math, etc.t, and get nothing but positive, helpful feedback and meaningful discourse that DOESN'T (key word here) infuriate me. Not sure how it's a "circle jerk" at that point when I can ask questions and have them gasp answered in a timely manner. Just because it has a "politics" Reddit doesn't mean…

Well it is true I'm criticizing reddit as it is without any customization, but I don't think that makes my criticisms any less valid. r/politics, r/atheism, r/pics, r/askreddit, etc. are, like it or not, major parts of the site and generate the majority of the traffic (oh, r/barelylegal too). The subreddits I've subscribed to in the past, like r/ruby and r/web_design have been so sparsely active they're next to worthless. If you say to me, "sure, the site sucks if you focus on that 90% of it, but it can be great if you meticulously dig for the 10% that's worth something" I think you've proven my point for me.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#127

Post by marknutter »

kaens wrote: post #121
jules wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As you note, the level of technical competence in the subreddits and threads that pertain to technical matters is higher on Reddit. Articles and discussions about just about any facet of any field that requires long-studied domain knowledge will have at least one commenter that really knows their stuff and wants to help people understand it. This is exactly what I mean. For example in a discussion about D, Walter B…

Reddit is a bit anti-entrepreneur Parts of it, certainly. It definitely has a generalized semi-anti-capitalist vibe, and yes, anti-bigco. I don't think too many of those people are against entrepreneurship in the sense of individuals (or small groups thereof) making a living for themselves doing what they are passionate about; I would imagine that the crankiness would tend to arise when an individual or company start…

They fail to understand that most big businesses started out as small businesses. you cant really be for one and against the other.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#128

Post by aberkowitz »

TeHCrAzY wrote: post #124
aberkowitz wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People tend to be fascinated when a system does things it is not created to do. Reddit's primary purpose is to share and comment on links whereas churches are founded to spread goodwill in a community.

I'm pretty sure churches are not founded to spread goodwill in a community.

Most religions exist to spread the goodwill of their respective deity or deities. Often times they spread their goodwill through charitable means.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#129

Post by limedaring »

incogneato wrote: post #80
limedaring wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? You hear of a group of people who do good things, and your response is, "Well, they don't do as well as this other group that does good things!" They did some really great things, and your response is "disgusting". Sad.

I would agree with you if it wasn't for the fact that Reddit constantly bashes that "other group" and never gives them credit when it's due.

Which negates their own achievements?

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#130

Post by kaens »

marknutter wrote: post #127
kaens wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is a bit anti-entrepreneur Parts of it, certainly. It definitely has a generalized semi-anti-capitalist vibe, and yes, anti-bigco. I don't think too many of those people are against entrepreneurship in the sense of individuals (or small groups thereof) making a living for themselves doing what they are passionate about; I would imagine that the crankiness would tend to arise when an individual or company start…

They fail to understand that most big businesses started out as small businesses. you cant really be for one and against the other.

It's not about the size of the business, it's about putting profit motive for a small amount of individuals over the lives and/or well-being of many individuals.

you cant really be for one and against the other.

This is like saying that a cup of water with a drop of red food dye in it and a cup of red food dye are equivalent because they both contain red food dye. One of them is going to be much more beneficial upon ingestion. That's a terrible analogy.

It just so happens that the majority of "big businesses" doesn't really give a fuck about how much suffering they create -- their primary motivation tends to be profit and power, where as the majority of "small businesses" are primarily concerned with providing for the livelihoods of the people in the business, because the people are passionate about whatever they're doing.

Don't mistake an argument against viewing people as dollar signs as an argument against big businesses, and don't mistake the tendency for most of the businesses criticized as sociopathic to be big businesses to be indicative of the criticism being of big business itself.

People who are anti-bigco tend to be so because of the whole "profit is the only imperative" thing, not because they are businesses that grew.

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