The Front Page of the Internet

When I was told that I would have to create an account on Reddit for class, I immediately thought of one of my college guy friends sophomore year who constantly had it open on his computer, laughing at things I never thought were funny. I had seen what Reddit looked like before because of him, but had never actually visited the site for myself. I’d never really even thought about creating an account. My favorite social media platform is Instagram for two reasons: 1) I like photography and enjoy editing and posting pictures. 2) I don’t really like writing statuses, like on Facebook or Twitter, about random things. It doesn’t come naturally to me and I feel like I have to really think about what to write. Sometimes I even struggle with Instagram captions and settle for a simple emoji instead. Needless to say, Reddit was somewhat of a challenge for me because it’s all about engaging in conversation with others and commenting on the content that others post. Even though Reddit’s anonymity allowed me to stay hidden behind my secret username, I still found myself wondering which post to comment on, what to say, and how to say it. I even found myself editing my responses, which is obviously not the point of a platform like Reddit. It’s meant to be natural conversation.

For this assignment, I ended up posting to Reddit 4 times; however, I deleted one of the posts because it was to the IAMA subreddit. They wanted proof that I was in fact me and that’s something I didn’t really want to address.

Below are the three comments summarizing my first experience using Reddit:

I felt that the only posts I was qualified to comment on and actually had something to say about were in the Vegan and Food subreddits. One would think that being anonymous would encourage me to simply say whatever I feel. After all, no one knew who was behind the name starfish5678. Yet, I was still cautious and self-conscious about making comments that were accurate and credible. Why? I should embrace my Freedom of Speech and just let it out. Does this make me a bad Reddit user?

Also, you will notice that out of the three different times I posted, not one person commented back or continued conversation with me. I have been wondering over the last week if the problem is that I don’t have the right Reddit “dialect.” Mike Rugnetta poses the question “Are there different internet dialects?” in one of his PBS Idea Channel episodes. He brings up the idea that as internet users, we seem to practice different dialects or conversation styles on different internet forums. For example, he suggests that maybe we “talk more Tumblrish on Tumblr, and less Twitterese on Facebook.” I wonder if part of the reason that people don’t respond to my comments is because I am not familiar enough with Reddit at this point to fit into their Community of Practice or Speech Community. In other words, I don’t speak the Reddit language. Personally, I felt that my advice to the guy dating the vegan was a quite helpful and reasonable solution to his problem, and I was hoping someone might answer my question about other good brands of vegan cream cheese because it is a topic I am oddly enthusiastic about. Maybe I didn’t receive answers because I didn’t write my comments using the right style or language. I tried to be casual, but are my comments too formal, too thought out, or too long?

In addition, another explanation for the lack of conversation that I thought about is that maybe the facilitator didn’t actually see what I wrote. For instance, there are 157 comments answering the guy asking for advice on how to deal with his fight with his vegan girlfriend over eating meat. Did he actually read all those comments? It could be possible that my advice never made it to him. I wonder how many people who start discussion threads actually read all of the responses that they receive.

I tried commenting on threads with fewer comments to see if that would help. It did not. The post about vegan cream cheese only has 13 comments and I was the second person to comment in the thread about why the world is so obsessed with food and cooking. Still, no one commented back or gave me many points on my posts. Something I don’t really understand is the algorithm or system Reddit uses to sort its posts. For example, below is the comment at the top of the vegan cream cheese thread:

All of the posts below the first one have more points. A comment with one point will be on the top even though there are other posts with only one point also in the thread. Does this have to do with the amount of people who comment beneath the post? The picture of the discussion above is a good example of this.

Overall, my experience using Reddit was okay. I don’t think I will continue to use it past this assignment. While I understand and appreciate its values, I don’t feel that it is a forum where I belong. I don’t really see the point in commenting on a post just to comment, which is what I did. I had to look around for quite some time before I found a thread I felt comfortable participating in. I don’t really enjoy talking with people I don’t know and who I’m not even sure will answer. And that’s the thing: you don’t know if your comment has been seen or if people will continue conversation. Everyone is anonymous, and so there is no obligation to respond (as in when someone you know comments on your Facebook post and asks a question; I would think most people would feel that they should answer). Reddit is a place to explore, and unfortunately, I’m not someone who is all that great at exploring, offering my opinion, or even sharing content like others share on Reddit. Despite my studies of Digital Culture and Communications, I have found that I am actually still quite uncomfortable engaging in conversation on social media platforms; whether anonymous or not. BUT, just because I don’t necessarily feel super comfortable being active on some forms of social media, doesn’t mean I’m not interested! I did enjoy learning about Reddit and how it works!