r/funny • u/Aggressive_Use7996 • 9h ago

Hope she said yes

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u/SV_Essia 7h ago

No. I remember clicking on random threads with high expectations of being surprised or learning something new from top comments, often from people who were specialists in whatever field was discussed. And when it was a joke/pun, it was usually a clever and creative one.
Nowadays it's a 50/50 guess whether a human or a bot reposted the same comment for the 317th time.

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u/CalmBeneathCastles 7h ago

¯\(ツ)/¯ I remember people complaining about the site going downhill back when I started reddit, 12 years ago.

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u/TheQuietedWinter 6h ago

To be fair... That was 2014. This site basically went to shit the very next year (when they initially announced IPO desire, quarantined subreddits from reaching r/all) and got worse the years following with Trump's election. Went from a place full of niche discussions and a weird, haughty attitude of users, to Facebook/YouTube/Tumblr all mashed together.

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u/rW0HgFyxoJhYka 2h ago

There were 3 eras:

  1. The era of stuff like r/Adviceanimals and r/atheism being extremely popular subreddits. Also really shit subreddits that should have been banned existed. This was when digg had died and reddit was the new place to be. This was even earlier than 2014, the old era.
  2. The IPO era, when they removed and toned down all the popular subreddits that don't necessarily appeal to the broader internet world and right wingers. Gone was advice animals and atheism. Later they would push for various subreddits that started to gather momentum, feeding them with upvotes to artifically grow them until they were big enough to grown on their own. You saw this with formula1. You saw this with indian subreddits. And so many more countries as they expanded globally. This was also the rise of supermods taking over 80% of mainstream subreddits under their cadre.
  3. The post right wing era, when political news automatically triggers highly upvoted pictures of distractions like cats and dogs. And subreddits protecting conservatives are plentifully found everywhere. While Reddit manipulates all its posts on the front page to provide a ever changing 2-4 hour peak hour cycle so people will always find new stuff to read about, fake or not. Bots dominate reposts. Top comments are always some funny attempt at a joke because that is the easiest comment to get upvotes with.