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Comment by eksemplar | Hacker News Reader

The new design made me leave as well, it had been s long time coming though. Most discussions are dumb, I can’t remember the last time I had a conversation on reddit where I wasn’t the most knowledgeable person in the thread, and that’s just a waste of time.

It’s not that people are stupid, sometimes you’re simply talking to a teenager with no life experience. Often it is because people are kind of stupid. My national (r/Denmark) subreddit has devolved into a vile place for instance, I’d compare it to t_d, it’s the best “quick” comparison there is, but it’s obviously not as bad, at least not yet.

I think /r/space is the only major subreddit that I don’t dislike, and most of the smaller ones have been abandoned.

The new design being horrible was just what tipped the iceberg.

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I agree, the redesign isn't great but that's not what killed it for me. The same discussions will keep happening there with no changes. I've had the same thoughts as you about discussing with teenagers.

/r/Australia isn't particularly racist or astroturfed but there is still a lot of times I'm amazed at what gets upvoted. /r/bjj is a good place for jiu jitsu content but the same stuff is posted across every network and the communities are so small we all know any news pretty quickly.

Maybe I just got older and care less about reading or discussing the same topics all the time. I've had the same trouble with Facebook recently where so many lies fill any comment section.

You would have seen that stat about Australians spending more time on Reddit than Facebook or Porn recently, right? That's why /r/Australia is bad now - it went and got popular.

This cycle of social networks starting lesser known but higher quality and ending popular but rubbish is inevitable because the bottom 25% of users have far more capability to drag a social network into the dirt than the top 25% could ever drag it back up.

r/worldnews is the best example of Reddit's degradation. Thousands upon thousands of comments with no real insight but the same memes and pop culture quotes.

r/imverysmart

I see your point, but I’m not sure how else to describe it.

Every time I visit HN I read something interesting. I can’t remember the last time I read something that interested me on Reddit, outside of /r/space.

I mean, I know it sounded arrogant to say I was the most knowledgeable, it simply happens to be true, but it only applies to Reddit. It’s extremely rare that I feel like that anywhere else, even Facebook is much better in that regard.

Maybe I’m just using Reddit wrong, but it hasn’t always been like this either.

I agree with you. Most discussions I see on reddit are dumb. Maybe it's because it's popularity means more uneducated people are going to the site, resulting in lower quality of discussion. Also anonymity means people aren't as afraid to sound dumb in their comments compared to facebook. I see better discussion on facebook probably because most of my friends have gone through higher education.

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