I know we pretty much all hated spez for all the shit he pulled, but a few weeks ago the tone towards reddit itself around here was more neutral. People liked it here on Lemmy a lot better, but people weren't hating on the old place so much.
Recently I'm seeing this huuuuuuuge surge of just pure fucking hatred leveled at the site itself. Anyone else notice this or is it just me?
I mean, I was there because I thought it was alright. I hated spez for fucking it up and completely screwing his communities over. But I never hated reddit itself, and I still don't. Otherwise I would've left a lot sooner.
I remember being introduced to reddit years ago. It was still new and unknown, there was in-jokes and cringey bacon narwhal shit I don't even quite remember. It was fun, it was cringe, it wasn't doomscrolling it was genuine engagement and I really enjoyed it.
Then the longer I spent on it the more hostile it became. Almost every comment thread is full of contrarians looking to argue with you just to get more upvotes and edit: omg thx 4 awards!!11! bullshit, bots "correcting" people's spelling and telling you how many consonants are in reverse alphabetical order in your username omg so cute! it just became regular, boring old social media.
Then the leadership bullshit kept just getting worse and worse and worse, every time you hear anything about what reddit (as a company) does it's just more and more hostile to users. The API/app changes and the way it was handled was the last straw. Users don't hate reddit, reddit hates it's users, the company has shown nothing but contempt for the users and unpaid moderators for years and I'm just sick of it and that long term animosity coupled with the last set of changes? Yeah, fuck reddit.
The edit: omg thank you for awards/upvotes comments just feel like such a self-congratulatory circlejerk, as if the point of the post was to "win" at reddit by getting the most points. The "meta" around reddit itself became less of a discussion and more a game to play to get the most points.
To be clear, I don't directly hate the "thank you" post edits, I dislike that they're a symptom of the "meta" of reddit becoming less around the links it aggregates and more around itself, maybe?
I always interpreted it more as surprise than anything else. The vast majority of the content you make, over 99%, gets minimal reaction. So when something blows up, it's very surprising and unusual. Shocking, even.
These people responding to that feeling in some way is natural.