Reddit: anonymity, Internet activism, and cat pictures.
If you consider yourself Internet savvy, you no doubt know — or at least have heard of — Reddit. In recent months,Reddit has influenced movements to stop Internet censorship, broken news stories, and have even used its power to track down criminals.
For those of you who are streets behind, Reddit is a much like a social networking site, but is mostly anonymous; it’s a link-sharing site, but it’s much more than just the news, cats and funny pictures on the front page. Reddit (and all its various subreddits) cover almost every topic of interest in the past, present and, bizarrely, the future.
Into the domain of subreddits
Some interesting areas include: r/AskReddit where users pose questions both shallow and deep to the user base, or r/IAmA where individuals with interesting professions or experiences invite users to ask them anything (though certain celebrities have caused snafus from their misunderstanding of the word “anything.”) I personally subscribe to over dozens of subreddits that cover my multifaceted areas of interest, (mostly video games and TV shows.)
But beware! There are countless subreddits that aren’t for everyone and some that really shouldn’t be for anyone. Luckily many of these subreddits are marked as NSFW (Not Safe For Work) and will warn you if you stumble into an 18+ subreddit. Remain cautious when looking for new subreddits. I’ll give you a hint: r/trees is not for amateur arborists.
Within each subreddit, users submit their posts. Posts either gain exposure from user upvotes or disappear into oblivion from user downvotes. Comments on each post are also up or down voted by the users. Users gain or lose “karma” points based on the number of upvotes or downvotes that they receive. This system seems like a perfect way to gauge the popularity of topics, though there is one thing that the Reddit community has unintentionally developed that counteracts the up/down vote system: the Hivemind.
The Hivemind
To truly understand the Hivemind you have to have been a part of it. I can never be sure if I have been influenced by it, maintaining that I have my own opinions and I am an individual. Yet, I find myself upvoting tired memes and posts that are blatantly “karma whoring,” i.e. playing to the lowest common denominator. The Hivemind influences users in such a way to make things popular, even when people consciously detest them.
My experience with Reddit has been much like a drug addict. Except my drug of choice is novelty. There’s something new on the front page constantly. Gotta get that fix! Something new and entertaining to keep me entertained. I can’t deny that getting a smart phone and discovering Reddit in the same month did indeed affect my GPA my last year of college.
Sometimes I open Reddit, only to find all my links purple. I’ve seen it all.Then ten seconds after I close that tab, I think “Hmmm, I wonder what’s on Reddit,” and I open it up again. It’s a strange phenomenon and a vicious cycle.
Getting the Reddit Enhancement Suite makes this addiction get worse. If you’ve ever been surfing reddit and decided to stop after one more page, the RES will take that away from you with a feature called Never Ending Reddit. It’s just like it sounds. You just keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. There’s no break to let you escape!
In the end, Reddit is an intriguing platform. Depending on how it is used, it can be a powerful tool for positive change or an instrument for maliciousness.
But mainly it’s a distraction.
