2488: That Happened

Are you familiar with the subreddit /r/thatHappened? It is one of the more popular subreddits out there, devoted to posting the sort of “PLEASE LIKE AND SHARE!!” garbage that people so like to festoon their social media walls with these days.

Posts that crop up on /r/thatHappened typically have a number of things in common.

Firstly, they usually involve someone making a point of saying they were doing something entirely mundane, like going to school or filling their car with petrol.

Next, they introduce another character of some description, typically a stranger, but one whom the author of the post mysteriously seems to know absolutely everything about, right down to their ethnicity, age, employment status, affluence and anything else you’d care to mention.

Optionally, a child can be involved in the story. If a child is involved in the story, said child will be quoted saying something that no child in the world has ever said, something which can easily be discerned by the use of vocabulary or turn of phrase. Even at my most precocious growing up, when I knew what words like “floccinaucinihilipilification” and “antidisestablishmentarianism” meant (and how to spell them), I still spoke like, y’know, a kid. Kids in these stories never do, usually coming out with some sort of profound wisdom you’d normally expect to hear from a wizened old karate master or something.

The author of the story, the character they introduced (who is inevitably a minority of some description) and/or the child will then become involved in some sort of altercation with an antagonist, who is almost definitely a white male, because as we all know white men are all literally Satan.

The story will then go one of two ways. 1) The author, the character and/or the child will then devastate their opponent in some exaggerated manner, either physically or with razor-sharp wit. The white male(s) will then inevitably leave with their tails between their legs. Alternatively, 2) The author, the character and/or the child will suffer some sort of sexist, racist, ableist, homophobic or transphobic indignity that is so profoundly terrible that the author’s immediate reaction was to post it on Facebook rather than take it to the authorities.

In the case of 1): If the altercation took place in a public place such as a school, petrol station or coffee shop, everyone surrounding the author, the character and/or the child will then spontaneously break into applause and at least one person will be crying.

In the case of 2): The author will blame the altercation on a major event that has happened in the news recently and will confess to be “crying right now”, with bonus points if they are doing so “into [their] cereal” or some other foodstuff.

In both cases, the author will then attempt to sign off with some sort of quasi-poetic but ultimately asinine truism and encourage everyone to Like, Comment and Share their post to “raise awareness”. Said post (which is inevitably set to Public visibility, even if the author typically keeps their social media pages private) will then receive multiple thousands of Likes, Comments and Shares through the phenomenon of virality, with a significant number of people sharing it doing so blindly without bothering to ponder how exactly something quite so improbable happened, or indeed questioning the author on further details of the incident. (This was a terrible racist/sexist/ableist incident, don’t you know? You can’t ask questions, you might traumatise the poor soul further!)

Once you’re familiar with this template, you can spot bullshit a mile off. I encourage you to get intimately acquainted with it before clicking that “Share” button in the future. On a related note, I also encourage you to familiarise yourself with Snopes.com if you aren’t already.

That is all.

1991: Reddit in Trouble?

I find online social networks a fascinating thing to observe and sometimes participate in. Twitter is the main one I’m a part of, and over my time using it I’ve been part of a number of different subcultures that make use of the site as a means of talking to one another about common interests, regardless of geographical location.

In this sense, social networks are a bit like real life; you tend to gravitate towards people with whom you have common interests, and you drift away from people you find objectionable or simply don’t mesh well with. It’s exactly the same online; I know exactly the sort of people I’m likely to get along with, and exactly the sort of people I want to avoid at all costs. The nice thing about online interactions is that you can — for the most part — take a lot more control over your experience than you can in reality. You can’t, for example, choose the people that you work alongside, so if you dislike, say, your manager or another member of your team, you can’t get away from them. You can, however, mute or block people you don’t gel with online; while there’s an argument that this can lead to an “echo chamber” effect in which people are unwilling to have their viewpoints and opinions truly challenged, for the most part I find this a good way of minimising the stress that social interactions (be they real or virtual) can sometimes cause me.

One social network that I’ve never quite managed to integrate myself into is Reddit, and that’s simply because Reddit as a whole is such a hugely sprawling entity that it’s difficult to know where to start. There are popular subreddits for pictures, jokes, games and all sorts of other things, as well as highly specialised subreddits for niche interests or simply running jokes. Effectively, each subreddit is like a forum with message threads and discussions that follow on from an original post, but there’s also a sort of “metagame” aspect to the site, where you earn points for posts and comments according to the community’s overall reaction to them. This metagame doubles as the site’s main means of automatic “curation” — high-rated content shifts to the top and becomes more visible, perhaps even hitting the front page of Reddit (which often describes itself as “The Front Page of the Internet”, though Facebook might like to believe differently) if it’s really popular and transcends its original context.

Reddit’s an interesting site to browse even if you don’t actively participate, though. It’s the birthplace of a number of now-commonplace Internet memes and jokes, and the community as a whole can usually be relied on for some highly entertaining, quick-witted responses as well as scathing takedowns of stupid, ignorant or bigoted people. Assuming the subreddit you’re in isn’t specifically designed for stupid, ignorant or bigoted people, of course.

Now, this latter aspect is where things have got a little bit interesting recently. Reddit has traditionally positioned itself as being a bastion of its interpretation of “free speech” online, trusting individual subreddit moderators to set the rules for their individual communities and enforce them accordingly, while at the same time ensuring that nothing actually outright illegal is posted, and if it is, that it is removed quickly. To date, it’s worked pretty well; while there are some subreddits that are the online equivalent of a notorious dark alley you probably wouldn’t wander into alone if you didn’t have a very good reason to be there, for the most part each individual community has kept itself to itself, content with its own little space of the Internet for its discussions, even when said discussions might not be welcome elsewhere on the Internet. (“Gamergate” subreddit “KotakuInAction” is a good example of this, and there are plenty of others along the same lines.)

But there have been Happenings recently. As someone who isn’t an active participant in Reddit, I haven’t really been following the whole drama, but so far as I can make out, Reddit brought on a new CEO recently known as Ellen Pao, and she has not been a popular “leader” for the site. The popular conspiracy theory is that she’s attempting to “clean up” Reddit prior to selling it off to the highest bidder — likely Facebook, who would doubtless very much like to get their hands on “the front page of the Internet” — and in the process is ruffling a whole lot of feathers of people who have traditionally found Reddit to be a good home for their discussions and activities.

Pao’s actions coupled with a widely-criticised lack of communication between the overall Reddit administrators (who run the site as a whole, and have the power to ban and “shadowban” users according to their behaviour) and the firing of a number of Reddit employees for seemingly questionable reasons have been causing rumblings of discontent for some time, but it seems that today, for whatever reason, was the tipping point; a number of popular subreddits, including front-page, “default” subreddits that are automatically included in a new Reddit user’s list of subreddits, have “gone dark” in protest against Pao’s management, the aforementioned lack of communication, a very inconsistent application of the “rules” for the site as a whole and, in some cases, a rather opaque sense of what the “rules” actually are. These subreddits have “gone dark” by setting themselves to “private” mode, meaning that only users who are already approved to post there (usually just subscribers to that particular subreddit) can see what is going on and being discussed; casual browsers, those who are not logged in or those who are not subscribed, meanwhile, are simply shown a default page explaining that the sub is private, and the reasons for it.

Over the course of the day, more and more subreddits have “gone dark” in protest, effectively crippling Reddit’s traffic as a result. It’s been absolutely fascinating to see, and while I don’t 100% understand the reasons for the protest at this time, I think it’s a potent reminder that when you create something as sprawling as a social network, as much as you’d like to think you can stay in complete control of it, ultimately the site it made or broken by its users. Without users, the site is completely useless, so if you piss off those users then you’re going to have a big problem.

It remains to be seen whether Reddit will pull through this debacle, or whether a young pretender like Reddit clone Voat is ready to pick up the baton and try not to make the same mistakes. (I mention Voat specifically because they have reported record amounts of traffic since the controversy really exploded today.) This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened, after all; Reddit originally grew to prominence thanks to the once-popular Digg fucking itself up beyond all recognition, so while it may seem dramatic to contemplate that this might be The Beginning of the End for Reddit, it’s certainly not beyond the realms of possibility.

Basically, the lesson from all this appears to be pretty simple: don’t think you know better than your users. Because you probably don’t.

1772: Around the Virtual World

I find Internet culture endlessly fascinating and, at times, more than a little terrifying.

One of the most interesting things about Internet culture is how small it makes the world seem at times. I recall when online connectivity was just starting to become a thing — beyond the old-school world of direct-dial bulletin board systems, that is — and as well as the obnoxious phrase “information superhighway” being coined, a second, lesser-known but rather accurate phrase came into brief usage: “global village”.

The concept of the Internet — or, perhaps more accurately, the Web — as a global village is an interesting one, and if you spend some time wandering around online, you’ll come to recognise the village’s various haunts. There’s the village hall that hosts everything from coffee mornings to neo-Nazi rallies (Facebook). There’s the pub where everyone is always talking over everyone else and no-one’s really listening to one another (Twitter). There’s the deceptive village shop that looks small but actually carries a frighteningly comprehensive array of products of all descriptions (Amazon). There’s the coffee shop where socialites of all descriptions like to hang out and have in-depth discussions about everything from literature to their sexual conquests (Reddit). And there’s that dark, unlit back alley that very few people go down, but down which you’ll find either an army of like-minded outcasts or a horde of terrifying monsters, depending on your outlook (4chan and its successor 8chan).

There’s far more to the Internet than this, of course; the global village has become more of a town over the years, but it’s never really lost that sense of having “landmarks” around the place: easily recognisable places from which you can easily get your bearings and which, should you choose to make them your regular hangouts, provide a sense of comfortable (or sometimes uncomfortable) familiarity.

They’ve all evolved over time, too. Take Facebook; when it originally launched, it was designed for college students. Then it expanded to take in young, cool people in general, and allow them to keep in touch with their close personal network of friends easily. Then it expanded again to become more public and open. And today, of course, almost everyone is on Facebook to some degree or another, regardless of age, gender, interests and even level of computer literacy.

Change hasn’t always been for the positive, of course — although how you regard these changes, positive or negative, is partly down to your own individual feelings and how you want to communicate online. Twitter and I, for example, parted ways when it was becoming increasingly apparent that the microblogging service was being used by a lot of people more as a broadcast medium — and sometimes an echo chamber — than a means of communicating effectively. Its inherent limitations started to strain at the seams as people, for some inexplicable reason, started to think that it was an appropriate medium for having in-depth debates about complex issues. (It really isn’t.) Then the marketers found it, trying to encourage us to tweet using the hashtags for their products seen on adverts or TV shows — who does this? And over time the noise built and built and built until, much like Facebook, it was not what it once was. For some people, it’s still fun; for me, it had lost much of the charm that caused me to use it a great deal in the first place.

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes in a lot of places, too. Take Wikipedia, for example; at face value, it appears to be a perfectly reputable source containing a vast array of information about pretty much anything you would care to name. Ostensibly being a reference work, much of it is written in an impartial, unbiased manner — though there are exceptions. And it’s in those exceptions you start to see that yes, this is something that is put together and constantly maintained by humans, many of whom are doing it simply because they enjoy doing it. Dig further and take a peek at the inner workings of Wikipedia and you’ll see that it’s far from a solo effort; teams of editors are constantly discussing, debating, arguing and even fighting over the most peculiar of topics; in order to deal with such situations, the site has formed its own quasi-government to arbitrate disputes, with unfortunate instances going through strict, formal procedures managed not by Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales, but by councils of users. It’s fascinating to observe.

There are billions of people on the planet, a significant proportion of whom now have some form of access to the Internet. With that in mind, it’s kind of crazy how small the Internet feels sometimes. That “global village” really is a thing and, while just like any other village, not everyone gets along with everyone else, the virtual world we’ve all helped build together is a fascinating thing indeed.

Just be careful if you venture into some of those dark corners. You might not like what you find… but on the other hand, there’s always the possibility of being pleasantly surprised, too. Explore at your own risk!

#oneaday Day 998: Generally Generalising

First up, read this. It’s an impressive piece of investigative journalism regarding a Reddit user known as “ViolentAcrez” — a notorious user for his practices of posting creepy photos of often-underage women without their consent. The piece describes the reporter Adrian Chen’s (successful) attempts to unmask ViolentAcrez and publicly shame him for the things he has spent the last few years doing.

Fair enough. As a number of people have said in relation to this story today, the “free speech” so beloved of Reddit users does not mean the same thing as “free of consequences”. And while Michael Brutsch, the man behind the handle “ViolentAcrez”, has not technically broken any laws with his activities — he wasn’t posting child pornography or anything illegal, simply reposts of images that were already in the public domain on Facebook and other services, and later voyeuristic images taken without the knowledge of the people depicted — the fact stands that his behaviour was more than a little creepy, inappropriate and actively harmful in a society that is, for the most part, actively trying to improve attitudes towards women.

I’m not denying any of this. While I find the tracking down and public shaming of a notorious Internet troll a little creepy in and of itself, what Chen did in the name of journalism is a far cry from what Brutsch has been doing for the past few years — and probably for the best in the long run. Brutsch will certainly think twice — or at least be a lot more careful about his “social media footprint” — before trying anything like this again. There’s a lesson to be learned in all this — if you’re a dick on the Internet, sometimes it will come back and bite you in the ass.

There is something that bothers me about this story, however, and that’s been the reaction to it. Specifically, the negativity directed towards the entire Reddit community as a result of this story and surrounding issues. For those who haven’t been keeping up on this story over the past few days, a number of Reddit subforums, or “subreddits” as they’re called, completely blocked all Gawker links in a showing of solidarity for Brutsch who was, despite his behaviour, regarded as a valuable member of the community and a “necessary evil” by many — while he was a notorious troll, the Reddit staffers made active use of him to police the less salubrious parts of Reddit and ensure that nothing that actually was illegal was being posted. A “man on the inside”, as it were.

Because certain parts of Reddit decided to show their support for and/or actively defend Brutsch’s behaviour on the grounds of “free speech”, apparently all of Reddit is now something to be reviled — a “cesspit”, as I saw it referred to earlier today.

This is the bit that makes me uncomfortable — an entire community being blamed and ostracised for the behaviour of one man in particular, and also for that of those who support him.

I’ve been on Reddit. I haven’t been on there for a while but I enjoyed a brief stint on there a while back. I joined some interesting discussions on a variety of topics ranging from gaming to TV shows via funny pictures and an accidental excursion into naked photographs that users had taken of themselves. (In the latter case, the notorious “gonewild” subreddit, the majority of comments were in fact, body-positive — particularly on the pictures of those who had been brave enough to post a picture of their obviously-overweight body — rather than perverted, which I found to be interesting. Also, it genuinely was an accident that I found myself in that subreddit — Reddit’s main screen gives little to no indication what “gonewild” is all about. In retrospect, I should have thought about it a little more before jumping in, but hey, I’m pretty hard to shock. But I digress.)

I didn’t spend long enough to make any particular friends there, but I have heard plenty of stories of people getting to know each other and making lasting friendships or relationships through the site. There are plenty of stories of Reddit communities pulling together to support others, too — stories of helping people through difficult times; stories of helping people who are struggling for money; stories of, in short, human helping human. I know at least one person personally who is using a specific subreddit for support in getting help for some of their personal problems and issues. There is plenty that is positive to say about Reddit.

And yet for the obnoxious, totally inappropriate actions of one man and his supporters — some of whom, it seems, have been or are on Reddit’s staff — apparently this entire, incredibly diverse Internet community should be ostracised.

Something really doesn’t sit right with that for me. To generalise one of the largest communities on the Internet as all being scumbags like this just seems both dangerous and unfair. I have plenty of friends who enjoy using Reddit for completely innocent purposes, be it discussion, promotion of things they have been working on or discovering interesting new reaction .GIFs. I know that they’d be the first to distance themselves from the sort of behaviour that Brutsch has exhibited, and yet if you were to take what a number of commentators are saying at face value, you’d have to brand these people as deviant perverts and assholes, too, simply by virtue of the fact that they’re Reddit users.

This is not helpful.

I’m fully aware that I’ve been guilty of this sort of thing in the past — not specifically with regard to Reddit, but with 4chan. I’ve referred to that place as a “cesspit” before and certainly it has more than its fair share of trolls and unpleasant people there — but equally now I realise that there are also plenty of other people who just make it their hangout of choice. They, subsequently, become guilty by association with the “/b/tards” who are responsible for the majority of objectionable material and behaviour on 4chan (and, by extension, the rest of the Internet. And they’re probably pretty pissed about that.

The same thing is happening with Reddit. As much as Reddit would like to market itself as a “social news” tool, let’s not be under any illusions — it’s nothing more than the world’s biggest forum. Like most forums, it has tons of subcultures and cliques, most of whom stick to their own neatly-carved niches for the most part. Some of these subcultures and cliques are objectionable in nature, and it’s up to the site admins and moderators to determine what to do about that — something that they haven’t done a great job with so far, and something they need to work on.

However, the mere presence of some objectionable subcultures and cliques does not mean that the entire website as a whole is somehow objectionable. It’s the same as saying that a particular city is a “cesspit” because, say, a greater-than-average number of registered sex offenders live there. Or the same as saying that all people who like a particular thing are a bunch of assholes. Or, in fact, the same as almost any other unfair, unsubstantiated generalisation. It’s not helpful — all it does is turn everyone outside that group against them, and everyone inside that group becomes defensive. The two sides inevitably clash, and things just get worse and worse rather than better. It doesn’t help anyone.

So by all means think that Michael Brutsch is a creepy old pervert whom you wouldn’t want anywhere near your children. By all means criticise those who supported him — including members of Reddit’s staff.

I agree with you.

But take a moment to think of the thousands — more likely millions — of people who make use of Reddit on a regular basis and have absolutely nothing to do with this before you start branding the entire community as pond life. Would you want to be made guilty by association with something you had no involvement in whatsoever? I doubt it very much. So quit doing it to others.

#oneaday, Day 340: Blogrollin’, Like They Do In Canada

I was going to write this post yesterday but then I got all wrapped up in the whole next-year thing, which you should read about if you’re interested. It’s the entry before this one. Which means it’s after this one on the page. Which… oh, be quiet.

Anyway. To the point. I reorganised my blogroll yesterday. No, that doesn’t mean I hung the toilet paper with the sheets hanging down the other way to normal, it means I sorted out the links in the sidebar. I nuked the lot and started again, because there were a bunch of defunct places that some people hadn’t updated for ages and a few sites that just didn’t exist any more.

Then I put out the call on Twitter for anyone who wanted to be included. I figured it’d be a good opportunity for me to have a chance to check out some other people’s work, too. When you’re writing a blog for yourself (particularly if it’s a daily one) it’s very easy to focus entirely on your own work and never pay any attention to what anyone else is writing. So, let’s rectify that right now, shall we? Here’s a bunch of the links I added yesterday and what they’re all about.

First up, the fellow #oneaday survivors, who are well on their way to finishing their first year on the “job”. You should check out all of ’em, since they’ve all got a veritable plethora of content for you to read and enjoy now. Like this dusty little corner of the Internet, all their blogs have evolved and changed over time, and hopefully they’ve all got something out of the experience, whether or not they intend on joining us next year.

So, in no particular order, then:

Game Design Scrapbook—Krystian Majewski’s account of the trials and tribulations of developing an actual proper game that you’ll be able to actually play and everything.
Halycopter—The daily blog of Jen Allen, editor of the slick and awesome Resolution Magazine, featuring candid thoughts on all manner of subjects.
Mat Murray—The man with the fastest Retweet finger in the West. He got married a short while ago and also takes nice photographs.
Mr. Writer—The #oneaday blog of Ian Richardson, veteran of Staffordshire (we salute you), motorsports enthusiast and aspiring journalist.
The Mirrorball—Daily blog of Mike Grant, Bristol-based writer and novelist.
Worthless Prattle Makes the World Go Round—Play Magazine’s Ian Dransfield sets the world to rights with a variety of amusing posts and a classic Gran Turismo 5 tutorial video.

Next up, here’s some of my friends, many of whom are members of the Squadron of Shame.

4X.Scope—Alex “Unmannedpylondronecommandsomethinglikethat” Connolly’s blog, which hasn’t been updated for a while but since he and his wife have been busy having a kid, I think we can excuse. Alex writes detailed, in-depth commentary on a variety of interesting games that you probably haven’t heard of, and also draws rather well.
Alternate Course—Chris “RocGaude” Whittington’s site, which he promises will provide a veritable cornucopia of audio-visual-textual entertainment in the coming year. Oh yes indeedy.
Cerebral Pop—As the name implies, this is a site that covers the more cerebral side of pop culture, run by a wide variety of delicious-smelling gentlemen, many of whom also frequent Bitmob (which I think I’ve been capitalising incorrectly for time immemorial).
First Time Flowing—Andre Monserrat’s blog, deserving special mention for buying me a copy of Baldur’s Gate today along with being a formidable opponent at Carcassonne.
Nice Guy Gamer—Cody Winn is the nicest person on the Internet. He likes video games, knit caps and kittens and writes about them here. Pay him a visit.
Press The Buttons—Matt Green is another ex-Kombo refugee and runs this gaming site with podcasting contributions from the sexygorgeous Brad Hilderbrand and Joey Davidson. Check in for some well-written commentary on games and the industry.
Rhymes With Chaos—Jesse Bowline’s blog covers all manner of arty, musicy, gamey, geeky thoughts and opinions and is well worth your time. But what rhymes with “Chaos”?
Starfuckers, Inc.—The online home of Ashton Raze, formidable writer-about-games, man-about-town, hat-wearer, champion of DEADLY PREMONITION‘s cause and starfucker.
We Clock—Ian Scott appeared in my Facebook friend requests one day with a mutual friend, so I added him. His blog covers a variety of topics, from general geekery to eye-opening slice-of-life stuff. He’s also an active member of the GOG.com and Reddit communities, so is a fountain of information on old games and Internet memes.

If I missed you, it’s ’cause you didn’t get back to me on Twitter. I know there’s a couple of you out there but you’re escaping me right now. Give me a poke in the comments and I will add your links to my sidebar (and this post) post-haste!

For now, enjoy all the hot and spicy content these fine folks have conjured up for you and I’ll see you tomorrow.

#oneaday, Day 305: My Content! No, MY Content!

I was watching a programme called It’s Only A Theory the other night. It’s an entertaining and thought-provoking show hosted by Andy Hamilton and Reginald D Hunter in which they bring on a series of experts, get them to argue the case for their theory then make an arbitrary ruling on whether to accept or reject it.

The episode I watched featured a guy with terrible posture who was convinced that “user generated media is killing our culture and economy”. You can watch the episode from this point here if you’re in the UK.

The gist of the guy’s argument was that the sheer amount of user-generated content out… there (here?) on the Internet is killing established cultural phenomena, partly because of the “culture of free” that there is on the Internet. Why pay for stuff when you can get it for free?

He also argued that the predilection for misinformation and relative lack of censorship on the Internet meant that overtly biased material could easily make its way out into the wild and people assume it’s fact.

Take this video:

Despite it clearly being dubbed with someone pretending to hiccup and fart, it was all over the Internet yesterday, accompanied by hyperbolic language (“I literally couldn’t stop watching”) and more exclamation marks than your mother uses when writing an email.

It is kind of funny, fake or not, but that’s beside the point.

There was an interesting twist in the ever-running battle of “who invented [annoying meme x]” recently as Rage Guy found himself at the centre of controversy. According to Internet wisdom, a meme is apparently officially “over” as soon as Hot Topic make a T-shirt of it. Because once people in the street start going “FFFFFFUUUUUUU-” to each other, what hope is there?

4chan decided not to take this insult lying down, despite having milked the concept beyond dry for the last two years. Yesterday, this post appeared on Hot Topic’s Facebook page:

Someone had “tipped off” Hot Topic that “Rage Guy” was actually a racist comic featuring a guy called “Race Guy” and promptly set about creating a lengthy back catalogue of racist comics. Hot Topic, as a company in the public eye, did the only thing that they could do in the situation—withdrew the stock.

This being the Internet, though, they were of course informed of the prank within a matter of hours and a short while later, this post appeared:

As mildly amusing as all this was, it goes some distance to showing that user-generated media is probably never going to topple properly-produced, accredited and protected media. Both will undoubtedly exist side by side. But while the children of the Internet fight over what is “theirs”, play childish pranks on each other, throw their toys out of their respective prams and call each other “faggots”, the professionals will continue doing their thing, the same as they’ve always done, and be paid accordingly. Those with nothing better to do will tear each others’ eyes out over who came up with the concept of producing shitty comics in MS Paint first.

You wouldn’t catch the BBC World Service trolling Hot Topic.

#oneaday, Day 301: I’ve Read It

I’ve been on Reddit before. I didn’t find it terribly intuitive, and the sheer volume of information on it was daunting and offputting. Sure, I helped support friends’ submissions when I could, but delving into the whole thing proper just seemed like a frankly terrifying prospect.

However, yesterday, I felt differently. Spurred on by this article, which several people had posted to Twitter seemingly independently of one another, I decided to give the community another look. I decided to just dive in and start looking at things, rather than getting analysis paralysis whilst looking at the front page.

And that, seemingly, is the way to do it. There is so much content on Reddit that it is impossible (and probably undesirable) to read it all. So you pick and choose the things that you’re interested in.

Now, I know that there are several people amongst those who follow me who are still utterly bewildered as to what Reddit is and what its appeal is. So, with apologies to those of you who are already well familiar with what Reddit is and how it works, here is, erm, what Reddit appears to be and how it appears to work, after a mighty one day’s experience of use.

Perhaps the easiest way of thinking about it is that it’s the world’s biggest forum. Users can post things, which are either links to other sites or “self posts”, which are simple messages. Attached to each post are two things: upvote and downvote buttons, and a comment facility. Upvoting or downvoting something promotes or demotes the content, making it more likely to rise to the top of the page (or not, as the case may be). And then the comments underneath are threaded, just like on most blogs these days.

It’s in these comment sections that the excellence of Reddit shows itself, though. A far cry from your average YouTube commenter (“u suck!!!!! lol!”), Reddit contributors and commenters appear to be, for the most part, mature, articulate, literate individuals with fantastic senses of humour and some of the quickest punning minds I’ve ever come across. It’s a community that, after lurking for a few days, I certainly wanted to be a part of. Discussion is (from what I’ve seen so far, at least) mature, thought-provoking but not afraid to lapse into a bit of silliness from time to time.

And diverse. Good God, Reddit is diverse. If you have a particular niche interest, you can pretty much guarantee there will be a “subreddit” for it. Whether you’re into gaming, gardening, FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU- comics, porn, music, Uzbekistani sledgehammer dancing… chances are you will find someone there with the same freaky tastes as you. And for those embarrassing questions that you really want to ask people, the creation of “throwaway” sock puppet accounts is actively encouraged to help everyone feel comfortable enough to say what they feel. Many Redditors use their main accounts, though, as the atmosphere of help and support in the appropriate subreddits is, at times, a shining example of what the Internet can be.

A poster I read earlier described Reddit as 4chan 3 days late with a filter for all the disgusting, gross and/or illegal crap. Which isn’t exactly high praise, but I can see their point. 4chan, love it or hate it, originates (or at least popularises) many of the words, phrases and memes we take for granted on the Internet today. But then those who are too scared to delve into the murky waters of 4chan (like me… I’m not ashamed) can come across this stuff without unwittingly stumbling into gore porn via Reddit. Everyone’s a winner.

Oh, just one tip, though… if you’re not interested in seeing a wide selection of user peens (interspersed with a few boobies) then just steer clear of /r/gonewild.