[raldi]

> The move comes at an interesting time for the cult website.

An obscure cult, consisting of roughly 175 million members.

[JonnieCache]

"Cult" does not necessarily have the same meaning as "niche" or "obscure."

Here they're using it to describe the fanaticism rather than the small audience. You could legitimately call star trek a "cult show" IMO.

[raldi]

Do you think it would be fair to refer to football (either one) as a sport with a cult following?

[JonnieCache]

Good point. Probably not. It needs some sort of outsider status. Which star trek doesn't really have any more but that's debatable.

[raldi]

But that's my whole point -- reddit may once have been comprised of outsiders, but those days are long gone.

It's bigger than Twitter was in 2012. Could you imagine a journalist in 2012 calling Twitter a cult website?

[glomph]

I think users of reddit still approach it like it is composed of outsiders (even though it isn't). For example plenty of people I know use the site but people don't talk about it like they would twitter. Using twitter is a sort of normal social network. Reddit is treated far more analogously to a tv show that some people like and others don't.

Of course I can't really back this up with anything as it is just a feeling.

[JonnieCache]

I didn't know it had grown that large. How much bigger has twitter gotten in the last two years?

I agree that in the context of journalism it's a loaded term that's probably not fair.

The outsider status is about more than the user count though. They maintain that status with all the weird stuff they get up to.

[raldi]

> How much bigger has twitter gotten in the last two years?

They're up to 284M: https://about.twitter.com/company

[riffraff]

I don't think "cult" means "small group" in this context, but "strongly followed".

At least, that is how I always interpreted stuff like "apocalypse now is a cult movie".

[alexis]

Too much data! Too much data!