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> “Why Reddit is like this” is a whole other essay; I think it’s built into reddit’s structure itself. Classic Eternal September. Around 60k subscribers, the

> “Why Reddit is like this” is a whole other essay; I think it’s built into reddit’s structure itself. Classic Eternal September. Around 60k subscribers, the cultural identity starts degrading, as the amount of "old guard" is outmatched by "new blood." Therefore, the old "monkey see, monkey do" phenomenon, where new users would slowly mimic the culture of the prevailing older users to "fit in," is replaced with new users mimicking other new users, and the culture shifting towards the platform's identity instead of retaining the sub's identity. Generally, the type of person to post on Reddit frequently enough, has social cohesion problems that may preclude him from fulfilling his social needs through more healthy avenues, like real life. The same is true for the majority of people that post online frequently. Usually the pyschological profile that follows that point is one built on abrasiveness, distrust and aggression towards authority, an inability to adopt social manners and participate in social contract, low emotional intelligence, etc. All of the aforementioned behaviors culminate into the toxicity and vitriol you usually see -- and as well why it's so prevalent.

disintegore 7y ago
A community grows and eventually reaches the point where users cannot recognize who they're interacting with nearly every time, where the submission queue is trailing down too fast for any single reader to process. When that happens, it can no longer function as a cohesive community. It becomes about as personal as a magazine about the very same topic. Furthermore, the incentives to post change due to the higher potential for "karma" (and posts therefore become more like clickbait), and the barrier for the admissibility of submissions becomes lower as a result of the "expert" or "enthusiast" segment of the population becoming a tiny minority. In my experience, these larger communities typically grow less tolerant of antisocial behavior, most likely due to acceleration of the process known as "dogpiling". Trolls get more exposure, and better reactions, in small-to-medium communities. It's still conjecture, but I think I prefer my hypothesis.
- endothrowho333 7y ago
  The above was from personal experience and observation from having been a part of many online communities -- pre-dating reddit -- in all ways including: here-and-there member, first-hand maintainer and manager, and antisocial member causing a ruckus. Armchair psychology? No, I've made many friends and acquaintances, both online and in real life. The ones that bubble around posting online heavily, have developed antisocial tendencies that were reinforced through social exclusion. A self-fulfilling prophecy. I know this, because I know those people well and because I was there at one point in my life as well. Neither is it condescension. Perhaps I may have been in-exact and may have offended some that do post online very regularly, but there must be a distinction between what they consider "regularly" and what I consider "heavily." Heavily, in my observation, is someone that puts aside a significant amount of time, usually involuntarily, to do nothing but interact with online communities for the sole purpose of social interaction. No value judgements were made either, but those characteristics are common among the aforementioned group. I won't address your hypothesis, because I'm not here to argue.
  - disintegore 7y ago
    If I understand correctly, your anecdotal evidence is what makes this not "armchair psychology"?
    - krn 7y ago
      What's wrong with simply sharing personal observations based on the decades of related personal experience? Anyone who has some training in science has learned to always be looking for patterns.
      - rakasaurus 7y ago
        Theres nothing wrong with it. Calling someone an armchair psychologist is an anti social behavior.
      - TLLtchvL8KZ 7y ago
        Well for one thing it would make me able to go around claiming that generally black people are criminals and rapists and that it continues to be so because the young here in my city are being sucked in to the "monkey see, monkey do" phenomenon because they have low emotional intelligence and distrust authority, blah blah. That is based on the past decade of my life and the observations I've made and the experiences I've had. I of course don't go around claiming such because it's nonsense and stupid.
- dang 7y ago
  > Armchair psychology, coupled with pure distilled condescension. Please edit the name-calling out of your comments on HN, as the site guidelines ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Your comment would be fine without the first sentence.
  - disintegore 7y ago
    The edit window for that post is sadly over, but I'll be more careful in the future.
    - dang 7y ago
      If you want to edit it out, I've reopened the comment for editing.
stanferder 7y ago
It might not be just reddit though. The author's summary points to a volatile combination of elements in Rust itself: 1) [T]he Rust project saw Rust as more than just the language... 2) unsafe... is a really important part of Rust, but also a very dangerous one, hence the name. If a project is considered to be not just a project, but something closer to a cause, people are going to defend their understanding of that cause fervently. And introducing the language of "safe" and "unsafe" isn't just descriptive, it's a value judgment. It has connotations of recklessness at least, and explicit threat at worst. People who perceive themselves to be defending a cause against danger are going to react very strongly, much more so than people who are criticizing an implementation choice on purely technical grounds.
- samatman 7y ago
  Rust didn’t introduce this language, they adopted it. Memory safety has been called that as long as I’ve been programming. Using the antonym of safe was a natural move, though with the benefit of hindsight, `danger` would have been a better keyword. After all, good unsafe code isn’t unsafe! It is dangerous though, because it forgoes guarantees of memory and resource safety provided by the compiler.
- cle 7y ago
  > And introducing the language of "safe" and "unsafe" isn't just descriptive, it's a value judgment. It has connotations of recklessness at least, and explicit threat at worst. Is it really a value judgment? Coming from a formal PL background, I had just assumed that the "unsafe" keyword was referring to the PL concept of "safety", AKA "soundness", which has a specific technical definition, and not that it was necessarily a value judgment. In that context, "unsafe" just means "the compiler can't guarantee the behavior that it can normally guarantee".
  - steveklabnik 7y ago
    You are correct. That doesn't mean that people will incorrectly interpret it, though.
davedx 7y ago
> Generally, the type of person to post on Reddit frequently enough, has social cohesion problems that may preclude him from fulfilling his social needs through more healthy avenues, like real life. You mean like making sweeping generalisations about a platform with millions of users?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
einpoklum 7y ago
> the [psychological] profile ... is one built on abrasiveness, distrust and aggression towards authority, Hey hey hey, "aggression towards authority" is not a psychological trait, but at most and pattern of action. Also, I disagree with your implicit maligning distrust of authority without generally distrust of others. > ... and participate in social contract, The claim of the existence of a "social contract" is part of the self-justification of authoritarian aspects of social structures in capitalist democracies.
rusttoxic 7y ago
Well said- sometimes i feel that HN is basically a practice for people on how to reply to toxic emails from coworker. "I should have framed it like this"
toyg 7y ago
Person posting on online forum says people posting on online forums have social problems. If that statement is true, you (and me, and everyone else here) have those same issues, surely?
adonese 7y ago
Not to compare or anything. But I’m active at r/Golang and I find that the community is comparatively better there. I was shocked as to how would someone told anyone to never write a code again! Maybe this because some members on Rust subreddit believes that they are more intellectual than others? It seems like a cultural thing, go people don’t bother to be seemed as smart or so and that’s possibly reduce the aggressive competition that naturally arise in places where intellect, high performance etc are very important metrics?
newsgremlin 7y ago
>distrust and aggression towards authority Not an exclusive characteristic of a reddit user, there are many different levels and types of authority. Perhaps the aggression towards all authority, or weighted to certain personalities of authority rather than the ones in the background, especially the ones that don't really matter i.e. internet forum moderators I agree with your general point that reddit fills a social vacuum in people's lives, like most social media does for others in different ways. Validation and expression etc. Personally I think think that's why society in general has become generally more toxic, everyone is really telling it straight to others but not being honest with themselves.
Youden 7y ago
A forum being large doesn't have to lead to a loss of cultural identity. My favourite counter-example is /r/AskHistorians. Over a million members (16x larger than 60k) and it has some of the highest quality posting and discussion I've seen anywhere on the internet. I think it serves as a prime example of how a well a forum can scale, if done properly, so long as there are strict rules and moderators.
strbean 7y ago
Psh, do you even know what time the narwhal bacons? /s I think Reddit is interesting because its design is more resistant to Eternal September than other communities. See the trend of creating r/TrueX when r/X gets Septembered. Unfortunately, this hits diminishing returns when more and more obscure subreddits need to be created. Tons of oddly specific niche subreddits have popped up and completely gone to shit in a flash. I think we're nearly due for the next migration (maybe a federated alternative?).
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nkkollaw 7y ago
A lot of guesswork and generalization, right there.

disintegore 7y ago

A community grows and eventually reaches the point where users cannot recognize who they're interacting with nearly every time, where the submission queue is trailing down too fast for any single reader to process. When that happens, it can no longer function as a cohesive community. It becomes about as personal as a magazine about the very same topic. Furthermore, the incentives to post change due to the higher potential for "karma" (and posts therefore become more like clickbait), and the barrier for the admissibility of submissions becomes lower as a result of the "expert" or "enthusiast" segment of the population becoming a tiny minority. In my experience, these larger communities typically grow less tolerant of antisocial behavior, most likely due to acceleration of the process known as "dogpiling". Trolls get more exposure, and better reactions, in small-to-medium communities. It's still conjecture, but I think I prefer my hypothesis.

endothrowho333 7y ago
The above was from personal experience and observation from having been a part of many online communities -- pre-dating reddit -- in all ways including: here-and-there member, first-hand maintainer and manager, and antisocial member causing a ruckus. Armchair psychology? No, I've made many friends and acquaintances, both online and in real life. The ones that bubble around posting online heavily, have developed antisocial tendencies that were reinforced through social exclusion. A self-fulfilling prophecy. I know this, because I know those people well and because I was there at one point in my life as well. Neither is it condescension. Perhaps I may have been in-exact and may have offended some that do post online very regularly, but there must be a distinction between what they consider "regularly" and what I consider "heavily." Heavily, in my observation, is someone that puts aside a significant amount of time, usually involuntarily, to do nothing but interact with online communities for the sole purpose of social interaction. No value judgements were made either, but those characteristics are common among the aforementioned group. I won't address your hypothesis, because I'm not here to argue.
- disintegore 7y ago
  If I understand correctly, your anecdotal evidence is what makes this not "armchair psychology"?
  - krn 7y ago
    What's wrong with simply sharing personal observations based on the decades of related personal experience? Anyone who has some training in science has learned to always be looking for patterns.
    - rakasaurus 7y ago
      Theres nothing wrong with it. Calling someone an armchair psychologist is an anti social behavior.
    - TLLtchvL8KZ 7y ago
      Well for one thing it would make me able to go around claiming that generally black people are criminals and rapists and that it continues to be so because the young here in my city are being sucked in to the "monkey see, monkey do" phenomenon because they have low emotional intelligence and distrust authority, blah blah. That is based on the past decade of my life and the observations I've made and the experiences I've had. I of course don't go around claiming such because it's nonsense and stupid.
dang 7y ago
> Armchair psychology, coupled with pure distilled condescension. Please edit the name-calling out of your comments on HN, as the site guidelines ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Your comment would be fine without the first sentence.
- disintegore 7y ago
  The edit window for that post is sadly over, but I'll be more careful in the future.
  - dang 7y ago
    If you want to edit it out, I've reopened the comment for editing.

stanferder 7y ago

It might not be just reddit though. The author's summary points to a volatile combination of elements in Rust itself: 1) [T]he Rust project saw Rust as more than just the language... 2) unsafe... is a really important part of Rust, but also a very dangerous one, hence the name. If a project is considered to be not just a project, but something closer to a cause, people are going to defend their understanding of that cause fervently. And introducing the language of "safe" and "unsafe" isn't just descriptive, it's a value judgment. It has connotations of recklessness at least, and explicit threat at worst. People who perceive themselves to be defending a cause against danger are going to react very strongly, much more so than people who are criticizing an implementation choice on purely technical grounds.

samatman 7y ago
Rust didn’t introduce this language, they adopted it. Memory safety has been called that as long as I’ve been programming. Using the antonym of safe was a natural move, though with the benefit of hindsight, `danger` would have been a better keyword. After all, good unsafe code isn’t unsafe! It is dangerous though, because it forgoes guarantees of memory and resource safety provided by the compiler.
cle 7y ago
> And introducing the language of "safe" and "unsafe" isn't just descriptive, it's a value judgment. It has connotations of recklessness at least, and explicit threat at worst. Is it really a value judgment? Coming from a formal PL background, I had just assumed that the "unsafe" keyword was referring to the PL concept of "safety", AKA "soundness", which has a specific technical definition, and not that it was necessarily a value judgment. In that context, "unsafe" just means "the compiler can't guarantee the behavior that it can normally guarantee".
- steveklabnik 7y ago
  You are correct. That doesn't mean that people will incorrectly interpret it, though.

davedx 7y ago

> Generally, the type of person to post on Reddit frequently enough, has social cohesion problems that may preclude him from fulfilling his social needs through more healthy avenues, like real life. You mean like making sweeping generalisations about a platform with millions of users?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

einpoklum 7y ago

> the [psychological] profile ... is one built on abrasiveness, distrust and aggression towards authority, Hey hey hey, "aggression towards authority" is not a psychological trait, but at most and pattern of action. Also, I disagree with your implicit maligning distrust of authority without generally distrust of others. > ... and participate in social contract, The claim of the existence of a "social contract" is part of the self-justification of authoritarian aspects of social structures in capitalist democracies.

rusttoxic 7y ago

Well said- sometimes i feel that HN is basically a practice for people on how to reply to toxic emails from coworker. "I should have framed it like this"

toyg 7y ago

Person posting on online forum says people posting on online forums have social problems. If that statement is true, you (and me, and everyone else here) have those same issues, surely?

adonese 7y ago

Not to compare or anything. But I’m active at r/Golang and I find that the community is comparatively better there. I was shocked as to how would someone told anyone to never write a code again! Maybe this because some members on Rust subreddit believes that they are more intellectual than others? It seems like a cultural thing, go people don’t bother to be seemed as smart or so and that’s possibly reduce the aggressive competition that naturally arise in places where intellect, high performance etc are very important metrics?

newsgremlin 7y ago

>distrust and aggression towards authority Not an exclusive characteristic of a reddit user, there are many different levels and types of authority. Perhaps the aggression towards all authority, or weighted to certain personalities of authority rather than the ones in the background, especially the ones that don't really matter i.e. internet forum moderators I agree with your general point that reddit fills a social vacuum in people's lives, like most social media does for others in different ways. Validation and expression etc. Personally I think think that's why society in general has become generally more toxic, everyone is really telling it straight to others but not being honest with themselves.

Youden 7y ago

A forum being large doesn't have to lead to a loss of cultural identity. My favourite counter-example is /r/AskHistorians. Over a million members (16x larger than 60k) and it has some of the highest quality posting and discussion I've seen anywhere on the internet. I think it serves as a prime example of how a well a forum can scale, if done properly, so long as there are strict rules and moderators.

strbean 7y ago

Psh, do you even know what time the narwhal bacons? /s I think Reddit is interesting because its design is more resistant to Eternal September than other communities. See the trend of creating r/TrueX when r/X gets Septembered. Unfortunately, this hits diminishing returns when more and more obscure subreddits need to be created. Tons of oddly specific niche subreddits have popped up and completely gone to shit in a flash. I think we're nearly due for the next migration (maybe a federated alternative?).

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

nkkollaw 7y ago

A lot of guesswork and generalization, right there.