Why I Probably Wont Use Reddit Again; A Bitch Rant

While I guess I think Reddit is ok, I don’t ever see myself using it ever again. For the same reason I didn’t end up using it a few years ago when I tried. Setting aside my personal views, the layout of reddit, while incredibly ugly, makes sense for what its trying to do. I like that there are such specific subreddits available but overall I felt like the formatting was so hideous that I didn’t want to give anything the time of day. Also I feel like most of my searching was a complete waste of time because I had to scroll through about 4359714357141485918 things that I didn’t care about/were dumb in order to find something interesting. Also I don’t like the anonymity for the sake of sensationalizing things. Like people really blew up about some stuff, or they just say troll like bullshit because they can and it felt really hard to wade through all that. But lets back up while I explain where this whole bitch rant is coming from.

I joined two subreddits before wanting to behead myself.

First, art. It was all right at first, seemed like a cool place to get anonymous critiques on your work, which I am totally down to do. The post I engaged in was one about a painting someone wanted critiques on. But while I did post my own critique of this persons work I got frustrated with some of the critiques of others because it was clear they had absolutely no artistic training whatsoever. Now I know what you’re thinking; “Carolyn, you aren’t even in art school and you’re kind of being a little bitch.” All of that is true. But I have been studying art since I was old enough to not eat the crayons, and this clueless person who wants critiques on their art doesn’t know how to determine what is credible information and what isn’t.

A good chunk of the comments were constructive but there were a tonnnnnnnnnnnn of comments that said things like “This is amazing it could hang in a gallery” or even worse “I don’t think you have anything to fix”. Then there were more that suggested just painting a person right in the middle to add interest (it was a landscape) and said things that every oil painting instructor would cry over. Its totally going to derail this persons path. Like, go paint with Bob Ross videos online if you cant afford art classes but dear god please don’t paint a human being right in the middle of a far away landscape for crying out loud.

Ironically the reason I picked art as my first subreddit was because I was trying to find one that wouldn’t anger me.

So naturally I decided to explore the scary world of subreddit feminism. And boy oh boy it did not disappoint! Essentially there is a subreddit for feminism and there is a subreddit for mens rights (aka rights that have existed for years?) and while feminism has way more subscribers both are so infested with members of the opposing group that it just makes for one never ending pile of heated rants. One guy even argued “if feminists are against porn because it’s an exploitation of women’s bodies then why aren’t they against men playing professional sports?” And this actually gained momentum as an argument that feminists don’t care about men even though it may be one of the single most uneducated things I have ever read on the internet ever. All each group did was insult eachother more and more, and it wasn’t even a debate that inspired reflection it was just yelling bitch and bigot at eachother left and right. As someone who can get into deep conversations pretty easily, I hated and had no interest in participating in this mess.

The final reason I don’t plan to use Reddit is purely because I don’t sit at the computer for extended periods of time. I actually hate it a little. I really just don’t have enough free time to scroll through reddit when I would rather just not participate and read the news. If I do feel like debating or discussing something, I usually do it with my friends, but anonymous forums aren’t on my docket.