Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
What is wrong with reddit? I find that oftentimes I have a question, and I can't honestly think of any other place on the internet that I can ask that question and get an answer other than specific subreddits. But at the same time, I don't want to post on reddit because I hate it. You can't post anything there without at least half the comments being about how you're a fucking idiot for even asking the question to begin with. Every single time I'm like "I know I had bad experiences on reddit in the past, but this current post I'm about to do is so innocuous that no one could possibly take issue with it and ridicule me for it", and every time, without fail, I'm proven wrong.
Reddit just seems to me to be the judgiest place in the world. Does reddit select for this? Is this some sort of toxoplasma in action? Does half of reddit just consider themselves to be better than other people?
I do think admin and moderator decisions (some of which were absolutely necessary) have resulted in its userbase becoming more selected for midwittery, conformity and smugness over time. In 2012, Reddit was so committed to its vision of a free speech-friendly website that there was a major controversy over whether or not to ban a subreddit for photos of attractive teenagers taken without their knowledge (a rare example of a subreddit ban I fully endorse, for what it's worth).
But successive bans of subreddits for weird porn, edgy humour or anything which contradicts woke orthodoxy (most notably The_Donald, but also numerous subreddits which tolerate even the mildest scepticism of gender ideology - I expect the days are numbered for /r/detrans) have resulted in most of the witches and weirdos fleeing the coop, leaving behind only the midwits whose tastes tend toward the anodyne and who can reliably be assumed to believe that we really have always been at war with Eastasia.
Hard to be at all sympathetic given that they banned any criticism of Trump. Hard to complain about being banned for 'contradicting woke orthodoxy' (which I don't think is a fair representation of what happened but nevertheless) when you don't allow any contradiction of Trumpian orthodoxy.
That's the deal they were offered. Pity that Reddit couldn't hold up their end.
More broadly, subjects shouldn't be (and generally aren't) held to the same standards as their rulers. Does filing a FOIA request give the government permission to wiretap you? Does skipping your court date justify the prison skipping your release date? If you lock your apartment, is your landlord justified in banning you from (otherwise-)common areas? If a student skips some homework, can a teacher skip grading their exams?
The only place pure reciprocity works at all is among peers, and even that doesn't always go the greatest.
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