What was the subreddit that represented to you the best example of downspiral of quality? To me it was /r/dataisbeautiful
What was the subreddit that represented to you the best example of downspiral of quality? To me it was /r/dataisbeautiful
At first it was all about presenting data in an original looking way. In the end it was about pushing political ideas in your throat using a plain bar graph. It was not about sharing something interesting you found but about taking advantage of a captive audience.
It wasn't really one sub in particular for me, honestly. The one big thing was the ever-increasing repost comment bots: they started to show up here and there and by now they're all over comment sections. I don't get the point of why they were created in the first place, and to me it was very analogous to the overall decline in the site. More bots, less actual discussion.
There's quite a few but I'll give my top 3:
r/TIFU and r/AITA - The former became a repository for preteen fanfiction and the latter became a place for confirmation bias/rhetorical questions looking for validation.
Then there's r/UnpopularOpinion which ended up being an oxymoron unto itself. I honestly don't understand how anyone thought that concept would work given that the literal point of a social media discussion platform, that utilizes an upvote/downvote system to determine visibility, is to push popular (highly upvoted) posts to the top/front. Very few people actually upvoted something that was unpopular and instead just upvoted the low hanging fruit popular opinion posts that were 'controversial' but still blatantly have a clear majority who support that side that OP took.
r/mapporn for me. Originally it was for beautiful high quality, high-resolution maps - the standard was so high that I would have been scared to post anything myself unless I found something exceptional, but eventually it became mainly low-quality (and usually inaccurate) data maps that all get mass-upvoted for some reason.
Controversial opinion maybe, but /r/AskReddit, when they introduced the rule that you couldn't put a story in the question. I absolutely LOVED reading whatever wild story someone had that prompted the question, and then reading the thread only if the story was interesting. Then they didn't want that to be the point of the sub and that ruined the magic for me. So I left.
/r/PointlessStories filled that niche though, and it never decreased in quality.
r/antiwork before say 2020 and even worse after the Fox thing, a lot of trolls came in once it got big and where before it was fun discussions on anarchist antiwork theory that coined the name, with some venting and support or discussing how a different society might look like.
Then it became the usual political battleground like many big subs, all about who to vote for in the US and a repost place for latestagecapitalism, then all the text quitting or firing screenshots and tipping battles for some reason, which I‘d also not seen before then. Oh and all the nationalist humble bragging which seemed condescending to me as EU person towards the US people and at the same time dismissive of issues in the EU too. I guess it could be summed up with: it felt more hostile to me.
/r/mapporn is another one that has gone down the spiral, it has a lot of the same problems as /r/dataisbeautiful.
I think the one that frustrated me the most was /r/data_irl, where about half the people in there take the sub's name literally for some reason and think it's for actual data in real life, and not a data version of /r/me_irl
r/meditation. I went there for mindfulness techniques (am atheist) and guided recommendations. This past year it started to evolve into a strange mix of gatekeeping and outright fighting. Drama and argumentative attitudes in a meditation sub...
I agree that r/dataisbeautiful turned out to be very political. What I saw was that the community was rather united in its political stance and if someone made a post that was out of line with the community's ideology they got roasted. The reaction was rarely about how the information could have been portrayed more intuitively, or how the data could have been stronger. Those reactions were for posts that were in line. Others were downright attacked. It certainly wasn't about making data beautiful
I have a different perspective because I actually became active on Reddit for a particular lapidary marketplace - not r/gemstones. but I saw r/gemstones go from a sub extolling the science and beauty of gemstones to a marketplace full of shady dealers trying to disguise their hawking of badly cut stones with sketchy origins. posts that often had to be removed by the mods when the OP wouldn't take no for an answer.
That's how most subs end up. They have a great idea but eventually you've posted all the cool things. Now, you don't really have anything cool to post that's on topic and the sub goes downhill. Seen it happen so many times
Maybe /r/malefashionadvice?
I feel like the early days were more, "I'm a normal guy trying to learn how to dress better." I learned a lot and it improved my wardrobe/ability to dress a bit better. But it felt like it became...something else? Like it was overrun by the kind of people who would unironically buy $100 plain white t-shirts--that sort of thing.
/nextfuckinglevel is so annoying when it gets to /all. Usually it's some trivial activity that is executed well or someone just doing their job. Nothing "next level" about it at all.
Also any of the large subs that get flooded with fucking TikTok videos. In the beginning everybody pointed out the shitty songs or fake laugh tracks etc, now it seems everyone just gave up and accepted it.
r/MadeMeSmile devolved into constant reposts and increasing animal abuse. The number of times I would have to report posts for unsafe shit or animal cruelty was really getting to me to me at the end there.
It was by no means the only sub that went in that direction. As others have pointed out, all of Reddit was going down the crapper but that sub for me epitomised how shit Reddit became - repost bots, comment bots, karma farming, fake content that was dangerous or abusive... it had it all.
There was a point where Ama was big enough to attract some interesting people but Reddit was still small enough that it wasn't just media circuit. Then it just became another polished, one sided, commercial, media trained nonsense
Youtubehaiku made me laugh and cry almost every post. Then it went big and tiktok, vine took that nieche spot so it went downhill. Still thoes apps doesnt do it as good as that sub did. Youtubehaiku is still one of the most subbed inactive subs. It nailed my mixed sense of humor and weirdness, loved it.
Meirl really degenerated over the years. It went from being specifically "selfies of the soul" to being just a generic meme sub
r/DataIsBeautiful, RIP. It was one of several -- actually, MANY -- subreddits that astounded me at first but quickly became a bore, as the quality of the posts collapsed like me without my walker. Something about the upvote/downvote system seems to encourage crap, or maybe (my increasing suspicion) the people on Reddit are now outnumbered by the bots.
/maybemaybemaybe
Originally it was a sub that had content where something hung in the balance and you weren’t sure what the outcome was going to be, sort of like nononoyes or whatever.
It turned into tiktok/scripted videos with a scripted outcome. Garbage.
/BIFL (buy it for life)
This one struggled for a while. At first it was artisanal created stuff that was low-run, high-cost, “hipster” stuff. Like hand-made boots, hand forged knives, hand-stitched leather goods like satchels. Then it was Darn Tough Socks. Lots of socks. Fjallraven. Jansport backpacks. Then people began to debate what could be BIFL because a lot of people wanted to post long-lasting electronics, but the rebuttal was always that electronics get outdated or unsupported. While these last two things were being debated, old shit that people found in their parent’s or grandma’s attic began to appear. 1970s electric carving knives. 1895 singer sewing machines. 1970s electric drills. Shit nobody had used in decades, used rarely, or couldn’t be bought anymore.
I left at that point.
r/conspiracy, it always had it fair share of nutjobs but it also had some awesome posts every once in a while in which someone would take a theory and break it down in points with good sources. The comments been even better, the top comment almost always was. Point 3, 4 and 7 have been disproven here, here and here, but 5 and 6 are solid further info here.
Over the years those high quality posts became less frequent and after the ban of td it fully turned into a right wing misinformation campaign with topics like the paradise papers completely ignored.
r/oddlysatisfying. I remember when it was actually things that were satisfying. Animations were common, and they were really good. At the end, it was just another dump for stuff that barely fit the sub.
It was /r/TIHI for me. It started out with genuinely bizarre and borderline disturbing things being posted, and devolved into half-baked memes and shitposts.