Board 8 > How was reddit able to ascend to being the 'front page of the internet'?

(+) Yeah! (+)

So I clipped all my social media the past couple of weeks. Deactivated facebook and deleted twitter. Only sticking to YouTube and reddit because you can actually learn things on these sites and they feel more anonymous so am less inclined to get into arguments or whatever

The thing that keeps striking me after a few weeks of reddit usage is just... how terribly setup it is. It's SO BAD. Multiple clicks off one thread take me to entirely different places, sometimes it's the front page of the website, sometimes it's that specific subreddit. Replying to a specific thread is so utterly impossible sometimes, I have to click into my mentions up at the top right and then show a parent comment.

How was this designed so poorly and how has it become so widely accepted as acceptable. The UI for GameFAQs messageboards that have been around since the early 2000s are a thousand times better.

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Yeah whenever I venture onto Reddit I am astounded by how non-user-friendly it is for the most popular message board on the web.

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Less censorship than other mainstream social media websites/platforms

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Underleveled posted...

Yeah whenever I venture onto Reddit I am astounded by how non-user-friendly it is for the most popular message board on the web.

And don't get me wrong, there is an abundance of great information available on reddit. And some solid communities from what I've seen.

But it's just so... frustrating to use their website. And they've had a TON of time to receive and adjust to this feedback.

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What I don't understand is how and why people read anything other than the top comments
Like, how non-top comments become top comments in the first place after a thread explodes in popoularity
Who the fuck sets their view to "new" posts
Who got time for this?

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Reddit is great. I also never bother to read anything but top comments.

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I'm assuming you're talking about new reddit, which is yeah, disgusting.

BUT you can go back to https://old.reddit.com , the most usable website of all time, and then, I forget how, but there's some button to click that's like "never show me new reddit ever again". It totally works, they haven't shown me new reddit in many years.

It's been like 3-4 years of new reddit, and it doesn't seem like they'll ever get rid of old reddit, because SO many people despise new reddit.

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As for WHY they made new reddit so terrible, I work in web development, and facebook's "React" framework (and similar frameworks) are becoming extremely popular across the industry. You can't get away from them. They're called "SPA frameworks" (or "single page application frameworks"). If you make a website without using one of these, you get looked at weird.

And these frameworks greatly encourage this style of website we're talking about, where every website feels like a weird homebrewed new operating system every time, instead of a simple series of webpages.

Ironically, I don't think these frameworks are becoming popular because people like the results...

Instead, they're becoming popular because it's more fun to write code this way. Developers love to write little interactive pop ups and layers and buttons, and the tutorials for these frameworks don't really teach you any other way to build a website.

Seriously, I talk to colleagues and ask them "can we please just build a usable site this time" and they're like "noooooo I will quit, it's way too much fun to build them this way".

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Epyo posted...

I'm assuming you're talking about new reddit, which is yeah, disgusting.

BUT you can go back to https://old.reddit.com , the most usable website of all time, and then, I forget how, but there's some button to click that's like "never show me new reddit ever again". It totally works, they haven't shown me new reddit in many years.

It's been like 3-4 years of new reddit, and it doesn't seem like they'll ever get rid of old reddit, because SO many people despise new reddit.

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As for WHY they made new reddit so terrible, I work in web development, and facebook's "React" framework (and similar frameworks) are becoming extremely popular across the industry. You can't get away from them. They're called "SPA frameworks" (or "single page application frameworks"). If you make a website without using one of these, you get looked at weird.

And these frameworks greatly encourage this style of website we're talking about, where every website feels like a weird homebrewed new operating system every time, instead of a simple series of webpages.

Ironically, I don't think these frameworks are becoming popular because people like the results...

Instead, they're becoming popular because it's more fun to write code this way. Developers love to write little interactive pop ups and layers and buttons, and the tutorials for these frameworks don't really teach you any other way to build a website.

Seriously, I talk to colleagues and ask them "can we please just build a usable site this time" and they're like "noooooo I will quit, it's way too much fun to build them this way".

Wow I want to pummel ur colleague could you maybe shove him in a locker the next time they do this

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Oh yeah old reddit for life

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Because you touch yourself at night.

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Reddit has an amazingly powerful system for getting people to stuff they want to read. Their interference with our contest in 2013 showed that. The implied clickthrough rates were unbelievably high.

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redrocket posted...

Because you touch yourself at night.

Honestly this took me back. Love it.

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How? How? Over our broken and battered corpse, that's how. Are you telling me you weren't aware of the stakes of that fateful 2013 day? Link was fighting for more than a title in that match.

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Bruh idk

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xp1337 posted...

How? How? Over our broken and battered corpse, that's how. Are you telling me you weren't aware of the stakes of that fateful 2013 day? Link was fighting for more than a title in that match.

My god you're right I... I somehow blocked it from my mind completely. The horror. The injustice. The TRAVESTY.

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xp1337 posted...

Link was fighting for more than a title in that match.

He was fighting for the soul of the internet itself. And he failed. Now we all know, firsthand, what its like to live through The Hero is Defeated timeline.

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The point of reddit is depersonalization. Message boards like this put the username front and center, and emphasize the linear thread of discussion. Reddit actively fights against that. It instead wants to distill the average sentiment of the public into a single manufactured thread.

It is very common for person A to make a statement, person B to ask a follow up question, and then a completely different person C answer the follow up question in the voice of A. So a convo on gfaqs which would be between 2 people responding in turn, is instead 50 different people all responding out of order, and then getting sorted and filtered by the votes into the final conversation you see in the top comments. Check out AskOuija for the clearest example of this.

Individual people commenting don't matter at all. It's like a wiki more than anything.

So that's why it's really popular. By design it shows you the average sentiment of the internet at that given moment. Without all the individuality getting in the way.

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Also you get to downvote idiots, it prevents entire threads from being destroyed by one crazy person as often happens on gamefaqs

And yeah, old reddit is so much better

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foolm0r0n posted...

The point of reddit is depersonalization. Message boards like this put the username front and center, and emphasize the linear thread of discussion. Reddit actively fights against that. It instead wants to distill the average sentiment of the public into a single manufactured thread.

It is very common for person A to make a statement, person B to ask a follow up question, and then a completely different person C answer the follow up question in the voice of A. So a convo on gfaqs which would be between 2 people responding in turn, is instead 50 different people all responding out of order, and then getting sorted and filtered by the votes into the final conversation you see in the top comments. Check out AskOuija for the clearest example of this.

Individual people commenting don't matter at all. It's like a wiki more than anything.

So that's why it's really popular. By design it shows you the average sentiment of the internet at that given moment. Without all the individuality getting in the way.

Exactly this. Which is why it's so foreign to us. On board 8, you're part of a community of people where you know the other people, you learn about their backgrounds, and you are responding to individual people. Reddit is just an amalgamation of ideas from essentially anonymous sources.

I just opened up new reddit for the first time in years. Wow, I hate it. I use old reddit with RES and it's perfect.

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It's crazy that L-block happened in 2013. For some reason I thought I was way younger than that. Like, 2009 at the latest.

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NeatoAnAccount posted...

It's crazy that L-block happened in 2013. For some reason I thought I was way younger than that. Like, 2009 at the latest.

L-Block happened in 2007 bro. What they're referencing here is Draven.

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ExThaNemesis posted...

L-Block happened in 2007 bro. What they're referencing here is Draven.

Oh you're right lmao my bad

GameFAQs as a whole is only slightly less impersonal than reddit. b8 is only like this because it's so niche and everyone has been here for 15 years. Some reddits are like this too, like drama and stupidpol and others

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Nanis23 posted...

What I don't understand is how and why people read anything other than the top comments

This is part of the reason it's kind of a terrible website.

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content centralization

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Top comments are kind of obnoxious because if it's anything opinion oriented it makes things kind of like a hivemind

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yes the upvote system is terrible

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ExThaNemesis posted...

Top comments are kind of obnoxious because if it's anything opinion oriented it makes things kind of like a hivemind

I never thought of that because I only browse subreddits for humor and gaming related stuff and nothing political and the likes
Twitter gets my political rage fill

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MySpace was a preview of the Casual Revolution.

Facebook and Twitter launched it.

Reddit perfected it.

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Nanis23 posted...

I never thought of that because I only browse subreddits for humor and gaming related stuff and nothing political and the likes
Twitter gets my political rage fill

It's just not political stuff.
It's opinions on anything really.

But the upvoting for comedy things is good.

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reddit is really, really good for specific hobbies or fandoms. the most interesting or useful information gets brought to the top and then potentially/eventually added to a sidebar or sticky.

arguing about stuff on reddit isn't a fun time, but it's not like arguing on gamefaqs is a great experience either.

a primary argumentative tactic on gamefaqs is for people to just flood the topic while ignoring any points that conflict with their stance. it's absolutely miserable and toxic.

think about how many topics on gamefaqs are 40% nonsense, 20% people trying to argue with nonsense, and 40% people saying "ugh just stop replying to the nonsense"

on reddit, your little pseudo-community can downvote the obviously terrible threads. on gamefaqs, you just have to wait and hope that the mods will ban it.

a good example might be vlado's old nationalism/race realism politics thread series that we had to tolerate for years. it didn't matter that it disgusted 90% of the board, it got to be representative of our community because vlado hadn't done anything technically banworthy. in fact, i'm just assuming it's gone because i put it on ignore.

i've always viewed board 8 as a windowless room with poor ventilation where you can't throw people out. I'll admit that the ignore feature has helped a lot, but up/downvotes still have their perks

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Xtlm posted...

But the upvoting for comedy things is good.

and porn

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banananor posted...

think about how many topics on gamefaqs are 40% nonsense, 20% people trying to argue with nonsense, and 40% people saying "ugh just stop replying to the nonsense"

Not that many if you mean B8. CE and POTD maybe.

Vlado's nationalism was, first of all, shared by a ton of people and so ignoring it is not a good thing if you want to fight against it, and secondly, reddit was an even worse nucleus for that kind of thing. It's the perfect place for an echo chamber, especially if you want to maintain anonymity. On B8, Vlado had to really put himself out there every time he said he wanted jews to die, etc. He would get blocked regularly. Whereas on reddit, he's just another voice in an abstract hateful crowd, who gets treated with the same respect individually as anyone else. That's why Ulti loves it so much.

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That doesn't make any sense. If we had upvote/downvotes here, Vlado's stupid topics would be downvoted into obscurity and nobody would see them. The "echo chamber" here would not enable Vlado, he would have to go somewhere else.
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I'm assuming you're talking about new reddit, which is yeah, disgusting.

BUT you can go back to https://old.reddit.com , the most usable website of all time, and then, I forget how, but there's some button to click that's like "never show me new reddit ever again". It totally works, they haven't shown me new reddit in many years.

this topic confused me so much because I thought what? Reddit is super easy to navigate

I totally forgot new Reddit is even an option. Its so bad, I cant believe anyone uses it unless they dont know theres an alternative.
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KingButz posted...

That doesn't make any sense. If we had upvote/downvotes here, Vlado's stupid topics would be downvoted into obscurity and nobody would see them. The "echo chamber" here would not enable Vlado, he would have to go somewhere else.

No, he would just hang with his nationalist crew, which is what happens on reddit

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Yeah, he would hang with them on a different board. Because on this board their posts would not be visible. That's the whole point of downvoting.
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reddit on desktop is a nightmare because it tends to hide replies after like the second or third one

I just use the official reddit app and it's easy to follow discussions

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I use new reddit. It is fine. But then, I exclusively use it to check out a few game subreddits on an infrequent basis.

I'm looking at old reddit for funzies and I'm not seeing any built in dark mode and everything is thrust over to the left in ant sized font. Images are similarly ant sized until you open the thread. I do concede that old reddit has the better conversation structuring, but new reddit is viable enough for me.

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Why are people still bringing Vlado as an example
He was not relevant for at least 5 years now

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Nanis23 posted...

Why are people still bringing Vlado as an example
He was not relevant for at least 5 years now

You should be glad they're still bringing up Vlado because you're pretty close to being the next example.

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StealThisSheen posted...

You should be glad they're still bringing up Vlado because you're pretty close to being the next example.

You think I care? I know who I am and what I am worth. I know I am far more logical than the majority of the people here

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ok vlado

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Nanis23 posted...

I know I am far more logical than the majority of the people here

Reminds me of when you freaked out about how a man could be such a self hating traitor to his entire gender, after I said women should have equal rights

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Nanis23 posted...

You think I care? I know who I am and what I am worth. I know I am far more logical than the majority of the people here

Thats it. Nanis is the new Vlado. Can we make it official now?

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As an official Board 8 Historian I declare this accepted.

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foolm0r0n posted...

Reminds me of when you freaked out about how a man could be such a self hating traitor to his entire gender, after I said women should have equal rights

This never happened

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Which part? The man traitor or the feaking out?

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foolm0r0n posted...

Which part? The man traitor or the feaking out?

Both of them probably happened I guess

But the idea that I was somehow against woman having equal rights is dumb
I never said that and I never thought that

You probably said something worse

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There are subreddits for EVERYTHING

The college football sub is fantastic. The story subs are entertaining, every once in a while you find absurdly specific subs like OSHA Violations or We Want Plates and it gives you an hour of scrolling through top posts of all time.

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