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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

> the constant comparison hellhole like Instagram that is causing mental illness.

Anecdotally, Instagram ranks much lower than Reddit for causing problems among the young kids I’ve worked with.

Reddit is an absolutely cesspool of misinformation, fake stories, propaganda, and rampant doomerism. Scrolling Instagram can’t hold a candle to the militant doomerism that seethes from sites like Reddit.

I think it’s an uncomfortable truth for techies who grew up with Reddit while sneering at photo sharing social media, but the content on Reddit is extraordinarily cynical and depressing.

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Reddit now is not even vaguely close to the site it used to be. Doomerism is popular on Reddit because the power users are Reddit are basically everyone who failed life. Can't get a job, can't find a partner, no friend, and normally for reasons their own fault.

Those people used to be social shunned and live on the edge of town but now their voice gets amplified 1000x because they are willing to live online 24/7 and take control of discourse.

How do you define doomerism? On the opposite end there's toxic positivity where Problems Aren't Real.

Can you really say they failed at life when they have so much power over society? Some moderators have control over an audiance of millions, something media moguls like Ted Turner dreamed of in the beginning of his career.

If anything the real losers are the people like you and me who frequent the site but didn't take advantage of the opportunity that it provides.

I think its hilarious you think reddit mods hold sway over society when the rest of us who don't use reddit consider it to be 4chan with login

one good examples are city subreddits. they are almost always toxic and negative. lately they cleaned it up but I remember subreddits like r/vancouver were a cesspool of angry white locals who were convinced the CCP laundering money was why they couldn't afford homes

> If anything the real losers are the people like you and me who frequent the site but didn't take advantage of the opportunity that it provides.

What am I exactly losing out on by not visiting?

What opportunities do reddit provide for me in comparison of me going swimming tonight?

What are the benefits of an hour worth of scrolling, exhausting myself mentally reading people's comments?

Reddit is so huge that making general statements about it is as useful as making general statements about the web.

You could be reading about interesting places near you where to go swimming. About swimming techniques. Cool adventure stories related to swimming. Etc.

There are plenty of useful posts and comments. They are also hidden in a sea of shit, just like the rest of the web.

> There are plenty of useful posts and comments. They are also hidden in a sea of shit, just like the rest of the web.

Sure, but such information I could look up the same from some swimming book at the library and find it quicker. The time required to discover those comments are not of worth when I just want to go swimming, I don't swim for anything other than leisure and just paddling about.

> Can you really say they failed at life when they have so much power over society?

They don't, it's all temporary. Other communities and companies are being created to circumvent this.

I think that the first lesson anyone whos signing on Reddit should be, to approach each post with a belief it is fake and is trying to see if it can deceive you. I know that for the hn crowd this sounds as obvious as the everyday weather, but not for kids with tech-illiterate parents.

Whatever there is to say about 4chan at least I think at one point it directly told this message.

> Anecdotally, Instagram ranks much lower than Reddit for causing problems among the young kids I’ve worked with.

It's hard to tease out causality because Reddit overuse would have more self-selection of kids with preexisting depression. Happy kids would see no reason to doomscroll Reddit.

Instagram on the other hand is more compelling to everyone, and what you might interpret as positive content could be interpreted by a teen as being excluded by the popular kids yet again, with no easy way to opt out because unlike Reddit everyone at your school uses the platform and expects you to be on it.

I'd like to see this backed by data. I believe the anonymity of the platform helps remove a lot of the stress, bullying etc. that make instagram so toxic for teens. There is shit content on both platforms. But no one at school associates your social standing with your reddit account karma.

Yes, I felt the same too. You said what has been in my mind but I was unable to articulate it. Sometimes I would be shown random post from extremely distasteful subreddits which I never subscribed to (awefuleverything I think). Sometimes I would get messages from random fake accounts with nude pictures of women asking me I am indeed. I haven’t used Reddit in a while. I used to be addicted to it. At its beginning Reddit represented freedom promised by the internet. Maybe because if that people don’t dis Reddit but focus on Instagram.

> extraordinarily cynical and depressing

You mean, like the reality humans created for themself to suffer in?

You need a social life to be on Instagram, so it has some kind of positive selection, even though those same people might get lost in the fake Instagram world.

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