I'm pretty sure I'm going to mindlessly go to Reddit and then catch myself. It will be hard to pull myself away on Monday and Tuesday, but pull myself away I will.
Reddit was born in 2005, and I joined in March 2012. I know because the app tells me when my "birthday" is. I have almost 30k in karma, a useless carrot that counts the reward of others upvoting your posts and comments. There was a time when I was karma chasing, and I work hard to not to that, but at times I find I do have feelings about being downvoted.
The Buddhist community I dwelled in steered away from superficial and perhaps literal interpretations of karma, but of course karma is the idea that you plant the seeds of what happens to you with your own agency in the sea of circumstances. It helps you to take ultimate responsibility for your life.
Reddit was created in 2005 by two University of Virginia students, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian. August 2017, Reddit’s major shares were acquired by Advance Publications. I thought Reddit was owned by Rupert Murdoch, but it's owned by Conde Nast. That is owned by Advance Publications, which is owned by the Newhouse family. They're a "major shareholder" in Reddit, so others own shares. Modern corporation ownership is complicated. I was shocked to find out Trump owns some of Anheuser Bush, and that's why he wasn't all against the far right wing boycott of Bud Light.
I see the LA Galaxy fans have pushed the GM out of a job in soccer. People have some power even if there is resistance to it.
The boycott is about Reddit stopping allowing other apps, 3rd party access to it. I also use Discord and there's a Reddit feed, so I can see if there's something new on the soccer subreddit.
In a way it seems insignificant, but it will not be easy to pull myself away. Every negative action by these addictive sites must be met with efforts to decrease use and break the addiction. I'm more about harm reduction at this point, and not abstinence for me, so two days will be good for me as well as good to send a signal to corporations that they can make mistakes and must be responsible to the consumers.
I have worked to decrease my involvement with Twitter because the owner has pushed his far right wing agenda onto it, giving more "freedom" for far right wing hate. To Musk's provocative challenge to quit it, I have taken more and more time off from it. The problem is that it's a main vehicle for sports and I'm a NYCFC addict. He's right, it's not easy to quit. Even as he wrecks it up and decreased ad revenue by 50%, it's still quite a robust platform.
I just started using these things and haven't been very reflective about it. By digging deeper, I've already spotted errors in my knowledge base, so that's good.
I sometimes get way too upset about losing a chess game, and being downvoted on Reddit. I'll reread a comment over and over to make sure I really mean it and often will take down comments when they get too many downvotes to avoid further downvoting. Damage control. I fancy myself a non-conformist, but I don't want to get super downvoted. It really makes you think about whether you want to stick to your guns even it's unpopular.
For example, I wrote the following comment about "Cushing Out" fans:
We need upgrades everywhere, and coaching upgrade wouldn't hurt at the end of the season. Part of fan culture is to express your opinion, and many fans feel without relegation as a consequence, and because of their heritage, that making bold demands to fire the coach is part of their culture of expressing passion for the team, and they experience some of the rebukes as part of a system of oppression. That also folds into NYC culture where we think we're the best city so we deserve good sports teams. Many Yankees fans remember George Steinbrenner's demands to win. I don't agree with "Cushing Out" myself, but I respect it. My waspy American rationality isn't the only way to be a fan.
I've become obsessed with culture, and I notice there's a counter force that wasn't to blandafy everything and make America just one culture--Christian, English speaking, forget your country of origin. I love traveling, so I'm don't want people to lose the quirks of their country of origin. I'm not afraid about being replace, I think that people are afraid of that means that being a minority is sucky and that to me means we should all just be nicer.
Now the above was downvoted. It might be there are lots of anti-woke people in sports social media. There's such a thing as brigading, where you get a lot of people to downvote things to give the impression that a certain way of empathy means you're making it difficult to be selfish and unempathetic. Or maybe my empathy is skewed. I keep the discussion going and make up the lost karma. One thing about karma is that if you keep the discussion going, then you're bound to hit on some positive points are articulations of it, that are worth other giving you positive karma. Karma farming is about the discussion and not grand slam memes and photos.
I'm also a midwesterner and don't like booing my own team, I'm like Trey and think my mental health is more important than getting all upset about a soccer team.
It's a weird populist voting of a comment without any other information about your being. I take exception to some redditors and regularly downvote their opinions. One guy was hounded off the Buddhist subreddits because of his fundamentalist approach to Buddhism, but there was a kind edge to his posting and he did provide some good. He said that the order I grew up in was not a Buddhist order, essentially dead naming my Buddhism, saying I wasn't a Buddhist at all even though I've taken the refuges and precepts, and continue to.
I have gotten against certain Tweeters who don't source where they get information from, and some people I respect, Trey and Paul Harvey, have been nice to him, so I'm going to join the "it's one big family" and not be borderline and super hate people with different approaches to epistemology. Some people are sensationalists and that's OK.
I have gone to Mastodon and Tribal, but I don't find them as appealing as Twitter yet. I can't get an invite to Blue Sky.
Hopefully I have gotten less and less besotted with Reddit, Twitter, Discord, but I still use them to pursue my interests and cultivating my feed is somehow important to me. Twitter gives me a lot of people I don't follow, so I'm more quick to cliff off it when they show me that. Discord suffers from lack of engagement or too much engagement. Going on Manchester United discord yesterday was too much for me. Skimming can be said to be my approach to all these, there is yet to be one way to get the information you want.
In the end boycotting because they're cutting third party access is a pretty lame cause, but I want to show Reddit their consumers have ideas and feelings about what they do, and we can strike back if we want to. I could just delete the app from my phone. I've done that quite a few times in anger with Musk for Twitter. In the end they've got me, I've invested quite a lot of time--spare time to be sure, if I had are more productive and focused life I would not be on there. Much of the time it's about evoking disgust and disappointment. Doom scroll is real.
Like everything, just paying attention can change things, and the thing you hope to have fun doing mindlessly turns out to be a minefield that requires attention. Maybe it's time to go back to TV. Actually Netflix, chess, reddit, twitter, discord is my drug of choice. It fills my mind so I don't worry about my worries.
Links to explanations:
Reddit simple. I feel silly for not using this 3rd party app that is being killed by Reddit. Now it’s too late.
Reddit complex
Coverage of boycott:
Reddit blackout: Subreddits to go private on Monday (BBC)
In related social media news, I'm reading that Elon wants to do away with blocking on Twitter. Every time I read about some far right wing nut, I go on Twitter and block them. Taking that away might really be the last straw for me and Twitter.
Update: When you go to Reddit, nothing loads up. Reddit is down. It's a good time to do maintenance when people are protesting your site.
Update 6/17/23: They're going to replace mods who don't open up their subreddits. (source)
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