I've been on Reddit so long that I've forgotten how to find content for myself. I used to be able to find cool stuff on the internet, but now I don't know what's good and what's not. I tried stumbleupon, but the way the stumble function works sucks. It sticks an in-web bar at the top of the screen and filters content through that which is similar to what Digg did to kill its website. Chrome has a bunch of extentions, but unless I know what they are or actually click on them, I have no idea what they do. I feel so lost in a world that I used to be comfortable in.
I liked that Reddit had intelligent discussion most of the time. Often, I would click on a topic and not even look at the website; preferring, instead, to read the comments. They would explain the topic, and then go into detail about it. Reddit would ask questions or make jokes about those topics. It was a buffer to the rest of the internet. Without that discussion, I feel like I'm going in blind.
What are some tips to find good and popular content? I don't want to be stuck with whatever Reddit, Voat, Hubski, or Stumble decides is worth seeing, but I also don't want to end up out-of-the-loop. I want to be able to contribute to the community in some way. "Hey, this is cool! You guys should see this," but I don't know how.
Thanks for all that you guys do. I really appreciate the advice. Grangerous
The thing about reddit is that it makes content easy. You go to one place and there's everything, waiting for you to consume. Before that, we generally used feed services to pull in the RSS feeds of popular sites into one place. You can do this now with feedly, which will give you suggestions of sources to add. news.google.com also has a really good pulse on the popular news of the day. That's what I use.
What I noticed with Reddit/Facebook is that it reduces content to soundbites/memes/quotes that are consumed in a few seconds before we move on to something else, whereas before it was more common to read a full article on a website or newspaper. It's like what has been done with food, instead of taking the time to cook a full meal at home we often choose to snack or eat fast food because it has a higher degree of instant satisfaction. This is something that should be resisted in my opinion. Choose the New York Times over Scumbag Steve.
Google stuff. Like I wind up finding new movies to watch all the time because I'll see an actor in something and end up searching their IMDB page to see if they're who I think they are. Once I'm there, suddenly I'm hearing about all these other things they were in and I end up branching off into 20 tabs with 15 new movies or shows to watch. Take a similar approach with other things you're interested in. Aggregators are a good starting point, even if you're not getting into the comments. All you need is some interest in a topic in your own mind to get the ball rolling. See what questions you have about something and go looking for the answers for it. If you find something interesting, bring it back to us to talk about it and there's your buffer zone. The more activity we have here, like anywhere, the more this site will come to serve that purpose, and it'll do a better job than those other sites because it's designed with positive communication in mind. Personally, I'm still using reddit. I'm just giving up on having in-depth conversations with anyone I disagree with there, because even if you're both polite, somebody's still going to get bombarded with downvotes. If something's that contentious I'd rather talk about it in an environment that's designed to make people nice rather than some ideological arena. It's still perfectly fine for looking at articles.
I also would reccommend googling stuff. You have an area of interest just Google it or something related to it. For stuff like this it's too bad Google removed the "I feel lucky" button (or is it still there but hidden somewhere?). Another great way to fond a starting point is to go to wikipedia and clicking the random article button and just start reading. You'll be surprised at what things you actually might find interesting.
If you look at this post, there's some good ideas for where to start finding content. As I said there, I think the most important part is being enthusiastic enough about something to want to post about it.
I had the same problem a week ago when I quit Reddit for good. I found I'd become so dependent, Reddit became:
1) the default "killing time" task
2) the thing I'd distract myself when doing something else online
3) my source for news
4) my source for current events
5) where I got all my content. I realized that I'd stopped using the internet like I used to: independent thinking, finding my own content. But in the week since, especially with the help of Hubski, I'm finding my old habits are slowly coming back, and bit by bit I'm getting back in touch with places to find info, bookmarking, nice research sites, etc. There's a word... can't remember it, but it's part of the appeal of games like Cookie Clickers. Something about a user being given a closed box, easy response routines, push the button, flag waves, the user is kept entertained, and it's something about how the human brain works, you can really do some complex psychological manipulation (think Pavlov, casinos in Las Vegas) with people using this. Reddit being one of those things.
I actually love stumbleupon! It's what brought me to reddit in the first place. I would usually find new subreddits by browsing the comments section. A lot of people would link to some relevant subreddit. Another great way is to follow any links in the side bar of a subreddit (or to browse related tags in the case of hubski). If you want to contribute new content I would suggest following more blogs and news websites. Blogs especially seem to be content creators.
What I used to do before things like reddit would be to research a hot topic on my own. Hear about it, then head to WIkipedia or google the topic. Find other sources writing about it or things that are related to it. If it keeps you interested, you'll be down the rabbit's hole before you know it and a whole lot more informed than what the front page of Reddit has to tell you.