SocraticGadfly: Possibly time for another Reddit break

September 24, 2024

Possibly time for another Reddit break

A number of reasons there.

First, the ongoing shakeout from Reddit's look to monetize itself better and gussy itself up as part of its IPO offer? Scads of "promoted posts." Weirdly, I don't see them on my office computer, just at home. That said, at home, I block every one of the promoted post creators.

Second, various subs. 

R/mlb, a relatively but not incredibly small subset of commenters are stereotypical Gen Y or younger male Reddit downvoting chuds. (You know it's one of them when they have the "18+" symbol on their account.)

OTOH? I just became one of less than 1 million (so far) to get 1K likes on a Reddit post.

R/geography remains known for its karma farming and mods not caring.

R/politics remains known for #BlueAnon tribal chuddery.

R/NationalPark, as far as US national parks, has a fair chunk of people who smoked too much Ken Burns. Others here, and this Venn diagram has a fair amount of overlap, are stereotypical Gen Y or younger COVID and post-COVID national park "discoverers." In part, I blame the COVID and post-COVID Gen Y and Millennials types out in national parks thinking a cellphone is an automatic rescue tool. It's cheaper for the Park Service to close a trail than to rescue someone, bill them below cost, and have only 50-50 odds of recovering even that. 

And, in other cases there? A guy who wants all national parks to be free, overgeneralizes that all other developed nations have free entrances (Parks Canada was the obvious refutation, but it's not alone) and then elsewhere, on another sub, claims that 10-20 percent of Washington State residents drive without license plates. Uhh, sure!

Add in that mods there hauled down this post, based on this blog post of mine, trying to promote serious philosophical discussion of the issue of beauty inside and outside of national parks? It's not like it was commercial promotion of myself, and the blog post had a summary of text, photo and video that pasting a huge block of text alone as an idea wouldn't have gotten across. Beyond that, any posting of a video or photo via link rather than direct upload could arguably be promotion of one's self.

AND add in that a lot of pictures aren't that good?

A split-the-difference is to be Farmville-like and post to my own subreddit until I hit 100 consecutive days, since Reddit "medals" (something else post-IPO) are at 100 after 75, but then in 50-day increments, an obvious attempt to induce addiction.

And, before I leave, or at least cut back? There will be more blocking, beyond the promoted posts.

And, it started before I posted this, with any chud who also has an "18+" logo getting blocked without telling them.

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