How to defend yourself when your photo is ridiculed on Reddit

But in actuality, reddit is generally filled with straight, white, English-speaking, college educated, single, 18-25, middle-class males [1] [2]. Reddit sees more of traits, perspectives, problems, etc of these groups and less of others. I see a lot of hostility towards perspectives that come from groups who fall outside the criteria above.

In other words, I see plenty of racists on reddit -- just not non-white racists. In my opinion, this is not looking outside my bubble, it's looking in at a smaller part of my own bubble.

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/gzb2w/i_made_a_b... [2] http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/social-media-stats/2012-soc...

I always thought that's because there are many teenagers active on Reddit. I think ridiculing others in an attempt to elevate ones own status is a very common phase for insecure teenagers to go through.

My experience is almost everyone grows out of it.

Reddit is just a platform on which any community can form. If you have a problem with certain subreddits reddit is not your problem, humanity is.

There are several nice and tightly moderated reddits that are great. For example /r/askhistorians and /r/askscience and several others.

I very strongly agree with this. When Digg did that "update-of-doom", I ended up on Reddit but I couldn't stay for longer than a year. There is way too much hate[1] on that site. And for those who say "Well, just stick with a subreddit you like" that doesn't work. Because of bitcoin, for the first time in like 3 years I went to /r/bitcoin & /r/litecoin. Didn't take me 10 minutes to run into a racist comment. For all the good deeds that happen on Reddit, I still consider it a negative net-value.

1. http://pando.com/2013/02/10/william-shatner-calls-out-reddit...

Why not? I get a ton of useful content from reddit, and find that the discussions in the comments are often enlightening.

The biggest problem with reddit is that you have to spend some time up front customizing your subreddit subscriptions. Once you've done that, the (custom) front page still has issues, and there is still bad discussion in the comments, but I can bail out of those easily by collapsing them out of view and moving on the the next comment.

Lots of people seem to want to state "I don't use reddit" lately like there is really nothing of value there. However, quite often in the comments section there are experts on the topic that provide some additional information that you likely wouldn't get by reading the same information elsewhere.

Edit: Many others have commented as I was typing this, and some responses seem to indicate that even staying in so-called quality subreddits isn't enough. I would just like to point out that in certain circles, people feel the exact same way about HN, and we're all here anyway.

I can't be the only one who just ignores others opinions about places and takes the good where I can get it.

Yes, they really do. And no, the comments aren't always terrible. You can't simply make absurdly absolute statements and contrived caricatures and expect them to fly.

You seem to have a deep emotional investment in Reddit, as if you put unrealistic expectations in it and now you strike out like a bitter ex-lover (alternately that you go karma bombed, turning you into a one-man anti-Reddit squad).

Reddit is a large site with a lot of diverse people. Many subs are not my cup of tea (/r/wtf is the domain of teenagers), but many others make for an entertaining and often information diversion.

I enjoy it. So do a lot of other people.

Why did you let yourself be so affected by something so measly?

Is it the racism, sexism, [insert-ism] that gets to you?

Your vitriol against just Reddit is a bit over the top.

All of your complaints apply here too. Food for thought.

But most of the default reddits, yeah, they can be complete trash and a waste of your time.

Unsubscribe from default reddits and pick the ones that really matter to you.

Oh come on, really?

I'm a hobbyist game developer. I frequent a few subreddits including /r/gamedev. It's a fantastic community and I've learned a lot there, and I've been able to use it for free promotion. It's been very valuable to me and I've enjoyed using it.

If your statement was "you don't stand to gain anything from /r/funny ever" I might agree with you, but this is just too broad a brush to paint hundreds or thousands of individual communities with.

The number of people who browse and contribute to Reddit while on the toilet I would wager is quite high, it is a toilet magazine.

Granted, HN seems to have a more pretentious selection criteria - less-mature-sounding comments are discouraged. But it seems to me that HN has much less tolerance for diversity of opinion.

But I read both HN and Reddit, as well as the comments and articles in many other places, because even though I may not agree with the attitudes or opinions, they are different perspectives all the same, and I think it's a fallacy to think that some perspectives can be of lower quality than others.

If you read negative hateful rubbish, it will rub off on you.

If you watch a lot of pron, you will develop a warped sense of what human relationships are about.

If you absorb a lot of politics from a biased (one way or the other) source, you will start to dehumanise your political opponents.

Balance and real human discussions are the key. Your time is precious. Your keystrokes are precious - you only so many of them - http://keysleft.com/ - don't waste your keystrokes of pointless ragefests.

Later, I remember being shocked to hear some co-workers who I considered kind of dumb, discussing reddit-this, reddit-that a few years ago.

I occasionally visit reddit these days, but it's more as a reminder that I live in a bubble and that there's all kinds of people. It's fascinating. People are just tragically stupid, and yet the world sort of works.

I wonder whether this is what the Eternal September felt like.