>Upvotes and downvotes turn the comment section into a competition to control the message, and the way comments are organized buries thoughtful posts that came a bit late, after a period of reflection. It also emphasizes junk and fluff that is easy to process and hides effort posts. I've only started noticing this recently. In the midst of all the recent drama I've been distancing myself from Reddit and have noticed that in my ~30k karma, it's 99% jokes and one-liners, and I'd started thinking in that manner when commenting on Reddit because I wanted the meaningless internet points. I'd stopped, for the most part, trying to engage in any kind of real discussion because a one-sentence jab could net me more of a commodity I kept telling myself I don't care about. I'm an intelligent guy and have always considered myself pretty thoughtful but I noticed that the way the Reddit system works it really took my edge off. I'm sure plenty of factors in my life and mind are to blame, but I've become much more intellectually apathetic over the past two years and I think my own rearranging of my interactions online to conform to "the hivemind" as they say, really contributed to it. I've posted all of four comments so far on hubski and feel like I've put more thought into those than I have in the past year's worth of reddit comments I made.
None of this to say reddit is inherently bad in any way, and I still plan on visiting the smaller subs like /r/Scuba and /r/Morrowind, but I don't think it was a super healthy place, mentally, for me to be all the damn time.
Wanted to comment about this part: I recently looked through my history and the only really upvoted posts were either agreeing with the viewpoint or making jokes like "Straight from the horse's mouth!" about a comment that was by a guy named thehorsesmouth.have noticed that in my ~30k karma, it's 99% jokes and one-liners
It's definitely the karma factor that turns it into an echo chamber. It's hard because all the users subscribe to subs that interest them, so of course on TV show subs, people are going to quote the show nonstop and get upvoted for simply repeating lines. And reddit loves meta humor. I completely understand new users over there not having any idea of what the hell is going on because the top comments are usually self referential. I don't have much of a karma score despite being a user for 3 years because I couldn't bring myself to play that game. Not saying you're wrong for doing it, it is fun and it's fun to watch if you're in on it. It just makes the actual interaction less valuable because it's a facade of social interaction. Sure, you might be talking with someone from across the globe, but when all you're doing is quoting Doctor Who or making Anchorman references, what's the point?