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Comment by bin_bash | Hacker News Reader

I'm in my mid-30's. I quit reading Reddit because in pretty much all the subreddits I was in I started to feel old. People sound like I did 10-15 years ago when I lacked the life experience I have now.

I don't have this experience on HN really. I suspect I'm closer to the average age here. There is the occasional poor opinion but it usually gets downvoted pretty hard. Even people that I disagree with I learn a lot from. Today in this thread I learned about how classic Christianity thought about doubt for example. Of course a lot of people are anonymous here (including me) so people are much more bold with their opinions than they would be in person.

Not discounting your experience, but to me I have a very different experience on HN than I do Reddit.

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Similar experience for me, on average reddit feels like people confidently speaking on topics they've not actually participated in much yet (if at all). Which reminds me wholeheartedly of myself when I was younger.

When I was in my teens, I would tell engine builders on a car enthusiast forum that they're wrong about how a specific part goes together, because I'd seen one on google images and was pretty sure I knew better. I have grown of course, and whilst I know more about engines now, what I've truly learned is that someone who has actually done the thing probably knows how it really it is. People often base opinions on how they think things should be, when life is rarely so perfect.

It has been a similar experience for me but with Slashdot.

No matter what the subreddit is, it’s full of radically far left political comments. They get upvoted and any attempt to provide reason gets downvoted.

Not sure how it became this way but perhaps it’s as simple as what you say:

> People sound like I did 10-15 years ago when I lacked the life experience

They’re kids.

Or perhaps it’s more sinister and coordinated. Either way, the political component of Reddit has made me abandon it. It’s unfortunate because I used to enjoy niche subs in the same way you would any other niche forum.

I think it's mostly a case of people wishing utopia was achievable in their fantasy-land. But, it doesn't help that companies like Tencent have stakes in the company. If the CCP can get their hands on anything American, it'd be to their advantage to try to use it to contribute to the destabilization of our society.

I'd love to hear what your definition of radical far left is.

Not the parent, but still want to respond. I'd probably be seen as radical and far left myself, especially on social and environmental issues (I identify as neo-liberal though), but I'm pretty scared by how often I read calls to abandon "capitalism". It happens on almost every subreddit and even more scarry, I've heard it from other super smart younger people in person. I think some of this is to blame on corporatism in the US. Attacking capitalism as a whole strikes me as incredibly naive though and risks slaughtering the golden goose without any viable replacement.

Specific to the far-left vibe on reddit, a few things come to mind:

- Authoritarian

- Intolerant

- Pro censorship

- Naive

- Bigotry

- More emotional than logical

Advocates for sharp increases in federal-level government power and authority at the cost of individual liberties and freedoms.

Don't take me wrong here: I don't pretend that I have all the answers, that people left of center are always wrong, etc etc. I'm just describing the reddit vibe and why it's not for me.

Those sound like criticism anyone can level at either "extreme" side, but the clearest definition is the rejection of capitalism. Maybe /r/latestagecapitalism and /r/antiwork start to fit those the anti-capitalist mold, but they are aren't the majority.

When I'm browsing /r/pics I don't see "seize the means of production at any cost!" for example.

These days "far left", in my opinion, seems to be levied at people who want to tax the ten or so ultra billionaires in the US, protect transgender rights, have universal health care etc.

As a non-unitedstatian, the entirety of reddit seems super right wing to me. You deserve free universal medical care.

It's the lack of nuance that makes any conversation far <direction>.

I was pretty left wing until the whole AOC "scarcity is a lie" wing of the party started taking over all online conversation. I'm sure the same applies to conservatives and Boebert/Greene nutjobs.

I'm sure whether you see Reddit as left or right is mostly colored by the comments and posts that stick out to you, and those are probably the ones you find crazy or distasteful.

I'm more left wing because of aoc and Bernie. Bernie in particular is a great example of left wing politics that don't alienate people on race.

He's very classist though. Not wanting to give someone something doesn't mean you don't want them to have it, and he definitely conflates those two to give himself the moral high ground constantly.

I have the opposite experience. Try discussing pretty much anything (from latest news, to car repair, to salad recipes), and see how quick it goes to bashing GOP and Trump supporters. As a non-USian myself, this gets really tiring pretty quick.

A considerable chunk of the left-wing in the US would be considered right-wing almost anywhere else, so it's no surprise a non-American would see it that way (seeing how the majority of Reddit users are American)

Europeans keep saying this but Le Pen got 41.4% of the vote in France, so... you_cant_explain_that_meme.jpg

Also good to keep in mind that the US core Democratic party platform is only able to purport positions that have a reasonable chance of winning over some of the moderate right wing in the country. They're constrained by whatever the moderate right thinks (for better or worse)

You're being downvoted for bringing up politics—or maybe the "sinister and coordinated" sentence which I certainly find hard to believe. That's actually interesting since I was going to include pretty much this in my parent comment but left it out since I thought it would cause people to miss my point.

I think like a lot of people I'm moving more towards the center from the left as I get older and I find this is a point of contention with me and people on reddit. It's not only that though, it's also things like people being dogmatic about particular programming languages. I used to do that too but now I tend to see the world in grayscale. There are positives and negatives about pretty much everything.

Regardless, I think this is mostly an age thing since people remind me so much of younger self. I don't think they're even wrong necessarily but I did find myself practicing "Duty Calls" quite often: https://xkcd.com/386/

I mean Reddit is an echo chamber in the worst possible way and it doesn't help that the admins don't understand the concept of a containment board and think if you delete the board the users and their opinions will evaporate into nothing, so you just get the same extreme groups being corralled into smaller and smaller concentrations with other extreme groups.

American Politics in general dominates almost all online conversation spaces, as someone who doesn't live there it has essentially ruined most internet forums in English for me.

I used to think people who banned politics from the dinner table were being closed minded, but I get it now, they're fucking bored of the topic, and it creates tensions that the topic is underserved of. It's the same discussion over and over again.

> No matter what the subreddit is, it’s full of radically far left political comments. They get upvoted and any attempt to provide reason gets downvoted. Not sure how it became this way but perhaps it’s as simple as what you say

I can comment a bit about how this is achieved, and it is “achieved” because it’s worked for/not organic.

It starts with the mods being overwhelmingly far-left, from the mainstream subs to even obscure radio subs. People who post leftist #CurrentThing will almost never be banned, and people who inevitably reply will face immediate bans.

“So what? I just won’t comment” you might think, but most are unaware bans also shadowban your voting power. You’ll see the numbers change from your votes but no one else will.

This has the effect of shifting what’s “popular” in a given sub over time, further reinforcing the narrative. Lots of people go with the flow/assume what appears popular is correct, so the effects of silencing one side reach far beyond those who are banned.

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