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by zak_mc_kracken 3989 days ago
> This whole thing was really disgusting and made me hate the average Reddit user

They are not the average Reddit user.

Probably a huge majority of Reddit users have no idea who Ellen Pao is.

2 comments

Even if that's the case, they're a very visible component of Reddit's userbase, to the point that an outsider definitely might see them as representative.

If the default home page and /r/all can all be flooded with posts about her, it's not exactly a small group of extremists.

   If the default home page and /r/all can all 
   be flooded with posts about her, it's not 
   exactly a small group of extremists.
I don't think the numbers support that statement at all.

Reddit has roughly 1.5 million daily users. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/about/traffic

It only takes about a thousand (net) upvotes to get something to the front page.

So a very small (less than 1%) portion of the visitors can very much get things like "fire Ellen" posts onto the front page, especially when there's no opposing block of voters.

(In other words, there were no passionate defenders of Pao who were eagerly downvoting the posts that trashed her. There were only anti-Pao zealots, and a much larger userbase that simply didn't care much at all. Count me in the latter, FWIW.)

Sorry you're getting downvoted. Even Ellen Pao claims the racist and misogynist are a small minority.