[SweetestRug]

> You’re in a train station, you’re not part of it.

Thank you for posting this. This captures something that I had trouble putting into words.

As someone who started using Reddit back in 2006 pre-Digg migration, this is probably one the best explanations of the immense loss I have felt in experiencing Reddit change over the past decade and a half. All the parts I enjoyed were pushed to the periphery, and while you could still find "villages" there, the bulk of the experience was "just passing through". This isn't a "get off my lawn" sentiment, it's about what value you place on the places you inhabit, whether in person or online. Whether I kept returning to Reddit out of habit or because I was still looking for that old experience almost doesn't matter, because it's not there anymore.

[QuiDortDine]

As someone who was on reddit for about as long, I miss that. But I wonder if it's really reddit I miss, or the naive web we had back then, that allowed people to get excited? Back when everything was not engineered specifically to grab the most attention, I felt more like we were actually communicating. Nowadays we're just collectively filtering noise it seems.

[chinchilla2020]

I miss the long posts that explain a thoughtful, technical, essay on a subject. I vaguely remember from the ~2010s internet reading some very informative posts on bulletin boards and reddit.

Mostly gaming stuff, but there was some great work on math, science, and DIY. Today even the "Reddit gold" posts are garbage by the standards of those days.

[OfSanguineFire]

Once phones became the default device for browsing and commenting on Reddit, comments began to grow shorter. (Some people might claim they can type on their phone just as comfortably as on a keyboard, but this clearly isn’t the case society-wide.)

The sad thing is that even if you are using an actual keyboard and type well, you look like a weirdo on Reddit today if you type longform text. I have seen someone posting merely a couple of solid paragraphs get reactions like “LOL wall of text bro”.

The average person’s use of a phone today is also one reason why it’s not easy for PhpBB-style communities to make a comeback.

[milkytron]

> The sad thing is that even if you are using an actual keyboard and type well, you look like a weirdo on Reddit today if you type longform text.

I still do this on occasion if I think what I have to type is worth reading. But usually when I do, I include a tl;dr to act as a hook/summary to get my main point across.

[emodendroket]

I remember a lot of similar thoughts and remarks at the time about the Internet ca. 2000, so I feel like maybe people are just getting older. When people dig up old Something Awful posts from 2002 they aren't as funny or engaging as I remember but I was a kid when I first saw them so they isn't surprising.

[nicbou]

I remember taking part in an early Reddit gift exchange. People were gifting members in need computer monitors and and pizza. There was the jackdraw facts biologist guy. The website definitely felt smaller back then. It was toxic, but still cozy.

[terramex]

> There was the jackdraw facts biologist guy.

He even has a wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidan

> In July 2014, Eisenkop's Unidan account was banned from Reddit for using alternate (or "sockpuppet") accounts. The accounts were used to upvote his own submissions and downvote submissions made by other users that were posted around the same time and were potentially attracting attention away from his own.

[system2]

It was such a drama, then he came back with UnidanX. I remember that he found jobs thru reddit etc.

[bombcar]

A community that can support a secret Santa and not have it devolve into a shitfit of scamming and backbiting is still a village. Once it’s bigger than that, it starts to fall apart.

[jachee]

Funnily enough, Reddit cancelled Secret Santa (and indeed all of Reddit Gifts) early last year.[0] It hasn’t been a village for a while.

0. https://reddit.com/r/secretsanta/comments/nw294q/sunsetting_...

[randomdata]

Perhaps you're simply getting older?

In some ways Reddit is like the club. In your 20s you're meeting all these new people and the interaction feels amazing. In your 40s, you're still meeting all these new people, but you are bored of it and just want to go home to bed.

[stinkytaco]

I realize your probably leaning towards "naive web", but I think it might actually be reddit you miss, or at least the club that you identified as reddit. I say this because I felt the same 10 years before that about watching the decline of usenet. Or irc. Or metafilter. Or niche sites that I can't even recall the names of. It's not just "kids these days" ruining a more innocent time, but the feeling of being in a community with a shared ethos that's eroding as the community's values change.

[marssaxman]

It's a great metaphor.

The first time I saw this happen was clear back in 1997 with an IRC system called "Talk City". It was a dot-com startup that grew out of the incredibly vibrant, close-knit chat-room community which developed on Apple's short-lived "eWorld" service, carrying forward most of its people and culture... right up until the company signed a couple of big money-making deals, one with WebTV and the other with some ISP in India, connecting their customers to Talk City's network.

It was amazing to watch, in a kind of natural-disaster way, as hordes of strangers showed up practically overnight - far too quickly to be assimilated - and the whole social fabric dissolved. A community I had spent at least an hour a day on for several years simply disappeared under the flood.

[cbsmith]

Eternal September.

[marssaxman]

I'm afraid I only got to see that transition from the incoming side.

[TulliusCicero]

> Thank you for posting this. This captures something that I had trouble putting into words.

Yup. And from a mod's perspective: you go from being an elder in a village, so to speak, to being a security guard at a train station.

[benatkin]

Gah. I feel like I belong when I'm in a train station. It's part of the commonwealth.

[AndrewKemendo]

I’m with you here.

I was in the world record secret Santa and it was the funnest coolest thing ever (they sent me my world record letter even!)

Pre-subreddits, it felt very similar to HN (which they ofc have the same birthplace) and the real gold was in the comments, which made it stand out from all others and made it less about you and more about us.

When subreddits started it was totally game changing and from there on it was great.

The Condé Nast thing was weird but it didn’t really change anything, but slowly it felt like it was trying to always “grow up” but never figured out that it didn’t need to

All this nonsense going public is expected but it’s sad and another victim of late stage thunderdome capitalism.

[Kye]

I always forget Reddit came out of Y Combinator.

[charlieyu1]

Most Reddit subs are ruined by moderators who are very pushy for their own political ideals instead of being a place of healthy discussions.

[zirgs]

Yup - you can be banned from most reddit subs for simply disagreeing with a moderator.

[oilchange]

> because it's not there anymore

It hasn't been there for many many years. I loved how open and free it was. Everyone really had a place there and you could read and interact with every idea, viewpoint, etc. Then as it got popular, it got corporatized, politicized, etc. Journalists attacked it to make reddit align with their version of hell. Corporations attacked it to make it more amenable to foreign markets. Political actors attacked it to further their political interests. It became an insufferable propaganda shithole. Movies, music, sports, nfl, etc subs used to be interesting places for discussion. Then it became publicity platforms for movie and music studios, sports teams, etc. News subs used to be interesting places for open discussions. Then journalists got their meat hooks into it and now they are state propaganda. Even political subs used to be diverse places for political discussion. Now they are purely political propaganda probably run by political parties.

But I guess that's the way it is with all social media. Once it gets popular, the corporate, news and state entities want control over it. Now, most major subs are just advertising platforms. Which is ironic since most of the subs ( news, movies, politics, etc ) started as a reaction against advertisements masquerading as news articles, movie reviews, sports commentary, political commentary, etc. Money/power ultimately won and reddit became what it hated.

[pixl97]

>Journalists attacked it to make reddit align with their version of hell

I mean yea, you see it that way because you grew up with small reddit. But by the time journalist's were on to it, that small reddit was dead and a much larger city existed with all its dark and danger filled corners. Even by that time reddit was bleeding money fast and was looking for further investor handouts to survive.

Reddit never wanted to be small. This was always set to happen. I think you just have too thick of lenses in your rose colored glasses to see that.