Comment by Workaccount2

4 days ago

The cynical doomerism of reddit is like an infectious disease that ensnares you in their pit of misery with it's initial blast of catharsis. People whose lives bring them out of that swamp leave reddit and stop contributing, so it's mainly populated with miserable cynical doomers all jerking each other off about how screwed they are. Most of them are teenage/college kids working bottom rung jobs/entry level work/unemployed, with all the naivete that comes with it. Stay away from it.

74 comments

Workaccount2

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andersonpico  4 days ago

their cynicism is perfectly understandable once you correctly identified the demographics (which you did), so I'm not sure why you're holding pessimism against poor people with a bleak future; like it or not that's far more anchored in reality than anything around these parts, as there are far more people with "bottom rung jobs" than software developers and VC investors in the bay area.

  • tjwebbnorfolk  4 days ago

    Most people in the US begin life poor, and most of them are not poor forever. I wouldn't call this a "bleak future". I was definitely poor when I was 18, but I wasn't pessimistic. Pessimism at such a young age is almost always a mistake.

  • wavemode  4 days ago

    The subtext is that most Redditors have significantly better lives than 90% of people on Earth.

    Life is bleak if you perceive it to be bleak.

    • next_xibalba  4 days ago

      To wit, the vast majority of them have:

      - easy access to clean water

      - sufficient calories

      - safe shelter

      - education (presumably they can read and write if they’re on Reddit)

      - internet access

      - free time (can’t be writing nasty comments on Reddit if you’re swinging a pick axe in a coal mine)

      Many of these things can’t be claimed by millions in the world.

      And yet, it’s one of the most cynical, negative places on the internet.

      2 replies →

  • patcon  4 days ago

    > like it or not that's far more anchored in reality than anything around these parts

    TRUTH.

yodsanklai  4 days ago

Cynical doomerism isn't limited to low pay jobs. Another super negative place is Team blind, where a lot of contributors are extremely well-paid.

  • hn_go_brrrrr  4 days ago

    I don't use Blind often, but whenever I do I always feel better about my job afterwards. Yeah, there are definitely parts about my job that suck, but at least it's not that bad.

metanonsense  4 days ago

In my experience, this depends a lot on the subreddits you are subscribed to. Even in that set, the general mood sometimes changes significantly over time, e.g. because moderators change, a flood of new people is coming in because of some trends (AI), or some reddit meta events (eg a post being bestoffed). Generally speaking, a few vocal asshles can spoil your subreddit and drag the overall sentiment down.

  • Workaccount2  4 days ago

    The assholes on reddit aren't the problem, often they are the people who are closest to breaking free from the swamp (yes, some are just assholes).

    The problem reddit has is the celebration of it's doomerism, even in the small hobby subs the vibe is still present. The highest upvoted comments are so nauseatingly repetitive and formulaic, ridden with whatever the contemporary dogma of reddit is, substantiated by snowballs of echo-chamber fallacy with pebbles of truth in the middle.

    • PaulDavisThe1st  4 days ago

      Consider /r/BuyItForLife ... nothing close to what you're describing. If you want a different experience, you need to be more selective.

PaulDavisThe1st  4 days ago

Just pick your subreddits more carefully, and your experience of reddit will be extremely different. Mine bears absolutely no resemblance to what you describe, likely because I never go near the "top level" reddits, and stay only with the subreddits that matter to me.

idontwantthis  4 days ago

The worst is going on any city's subreddit. You will think it is a terrible place with the worst drivers, crime, terrible schools, no jobs, and loneliness. And if you try to contradict that with some positivity you will get attacked.

  • snowram  4 days ago

    Country specific subs aren't better either. They slowly changed from comfy places to talk about laid back topics to a full on brigaded cesspool where only the most polarizing opinion thrive.

mstipetic  4 days ago

As someone who’s on Reddit a lot, I completely agree

  • Workaccount2  4 days ago

    I was chronically on reddit daily from when Digg collapsed until they pulled the API. I was long overdue to leave by that point anyway.

    Now in the last couple years, both my sisters have discovered reddit, and hanging out with them is like the god damn /r/all comments sections all over again. So insidious.

    • scottyah  4 days ago

      I am very much in the same boat. I still browse every now and then, and now it feels like I can spot a redditor from two opinions/values in a conversation. It's definitely turned more mainstream and more indoctrinating. If Fox News turned our parents political, reddit is doing it to our generation.

      1 reply →

sdenton4  4 days ago

My original home on the internet is metafilter, where I've been a member since 2001. For an extremely long time, it was the internet's best kept community, imo. Unfortunately, it also seems to be falling into pure doomerism, especially as the user base has declined over the last few years. The overall population is definitely on the older side at this: I was one of the younger users 25 years ago, and probably still am.

Which is to say, the feelings of doom are quite widespread. There's a good argument to be made that it underlies the rise of trumpism: people in the sticks feeling abandonment, resentment, and doom, and expressing it at the ballot box.

  • layer8  4 days ago

    There were a lot more reasons for a positive outlook for the world 25 years ago. It significantly predates Trumpism. Some people see 9/11 as the turning point.

andrepd  4 days ago

Why would young people with dismal economic perspectives and a poisoned political system possibly be miserable? That doesn't take too much to understand.

  • ggrantrowberry  4 days ago

    They’re miserable because they think this way. They think this way because they spend time with others spreading cynicism. Dismal economic perspectives and a poisoned political system is a point of view and a talking point and in reality not true for most people. If you know even a little bit about history you likely won’t have this perspective. Get off social media and look around at real life and you’ll see all sorts of great things!

  • goatlover  4 days ago

    Also climate change, which the world seems unwilling to take necessary action to mitigate. Are climatologists feeling good about the future?

    Young people protested Gaza, climate change, racism, massive wealth disparity and they just don't see the results. Governments, economic systems and societies just keep the status quo.

    • brabel  4 days ago

      Young people are always the ones protesting against whatever they consider the currently big injustices. They rarely achieve something, but I think it’s great that they do anyway. It shapes their priorities and experiences. In just 20 years, they will be the ones governing and by that time they will have the chance to see whether they were right about whatever they wanted. Most likely they will learn that what looked like the end of the world back then turned out to be just another overblown issue which eventually sorted itself out. And they will go on to mostly perpetuate the status quo with just a few changes that happen gradually, like the acceptance of LGBT and elimination of most institutional racism in my lifetime. When I was young we all thought that in the future , there would be too many people on the planet and not enough food for everyone. Job prospects were low due to tremendous competition as baby boomers made sure there had never been so many young people before. Some people believed pollution would get so bad that water would become as valuable as gold. This sounds ridiculous now but was dead serious back then.

      10 replies →

andoando  4 days ago

Its not the doomerism that bothers me. Its the hivemind mentality and brain dead comments and zero critical thinking, and the absurd negativity and judgment of everyone and everything, and the politicalization of all the main subs (top post on pics is pretty much guranteed to be something Trump) Even as someone thats far left I cant stand Reddits mentality.

15 years ago there were nice discussions happening on reddit, now all the comments are one liner stupid jokes from people who never even bothered to read the article and people calling you a bootlicker if you don't agree with every nonsense against Trump/Musk/some billionaire.

  • SoftTalker  4 days ago

    Yeah you can pretty easily spot the chronically addicted redditor by their copy/paste standard rejoinders, memes, and cliches.

    Also, more and more of them are bots which are trained to regurgitate themes that get a lot of engagement.

Psillisp  4 days ago

Reddit literally is what you make of it. Unlike HN.

  • brightball  4 days ago

    Only if you create an account and start subscribing. If you just visit and browse you end up at all/popular which, when I still visited it was very predictable content any given day.

    • 4k93n2  4 days ago

      you can hide a fair bit with ublock origin, if you dont mind using old.reddit

        old.reddit.com##div[data-subreddit="politics"]
  old.reddit.com##.linkflairlabel[title="Politics"]:upward(.link)
  old.reddit.com##.link:has-text(/Trump|MAGA/i)
  old.reddit.com##.link:has(a[href*="foxnews.com"])

      although i have hundreds of these filters and its still not great, but its better than nothing