I have been told, many times over the past fifty years, that it is uniquely frustrating to be a young(ish) white man in modern America. “Everybody knows” that white American men have all the power, and yet, from the perspective of the vast majority of young white men, they spend their best hours (if they’re lucky) performing crappy jobs requiring abject subservience to older more fortunate individuals, and getting laid (if they’re lucky) requires abject subservience to people who are not even young(ish) white men. This strikes young(ish) white men as brutally unfair.
Also, testosterone (however organically sourced) is one hell of a drug.
This is the lens through which I try to understand Reddit, because I’m too old and ADD to immerse myself in the full Reddit experience. I accept that most of Reddit is people sharing their interests, however quirky — people who neither need nor want my approval. Many of my own hobbies are perennial targets of normals-scorn, so it’s not like I don’t understand the defensiveness when a small atypical fringe of ‘my’ community is attacked. But then again, I could not appreciate the importance of self-identifying as a Trekker instead of a Trekkie (which was the friendship-destroying, marriage-threatening debate among my interest-group peers in the mid-1970s), so maybe I’m just not serious enough to understand the very strong feelings evoked by the ongoing Crisis in Reddit-Space.
That being said, I appreciated Margaret Hartmann’s explainer in NYMag:
… Reddit is a site founded in 2005 that bills itself as the “front page of the internet.” It’s the tenth most popular site in the U.S. and the 33rd most visited worldwide, according to Alexa.com. The basic concept is that users can post anything — observations, images, TV show analysis, questions about weird medical ailments, etc. — and others can reply. Every comment can get “upvoted” or “downvoted,” making it more or less prominent on the page.
Users can customize which subreddits they subscribe to, so when a particular user logs on to the site she may only see respectful discourse on Game of Thrones, makeup tips, photos of abandoned buildings, and facetious praise for Nicolas Cage. But as the Daily Beast notes, 74 percent of Reddit users are male and nearly 60 percent are under age 34. If someone is complaining about a Redditor online, they’re probably talking about the stereotypical young male user who sees the site as a bastion of free speech and will vigorously defend the existence of gross subreddits such as /r/creepshots and /r/fatpeoplehate. In recent years Reddit administrators have sporadically removed some particularly offensive subreddits (though some just reemerged under different names).
What started the current uproar?
Reddit has about 60 paid employees, and they’ve traditionally been fairly hands off. One exception was Victoria Taylor, who played a key role in developing and coordinating Reddit’s popular “Ask Me Anything” posts… Taylor seemed to get Reddit in a way the other administrators didn’t, and the site’s powerful moderators — the unpaid top users who actually run the various communities — came to rely on her. In a post revealing that Taylor had been suddenly let go, AMA moderator karmanaut said the administrators gave them no warning, though she was in the midst of helping them set up several projects…/r/IAmA and several other subreddits said they had to go private because they needed to figure out how to function without Taylor. Soon hundreds of subreddits joined in, temporarily shutting down to protest her dismissal, and what they said was increasingly poor communication and disrespect from the administrators…
Which is a lead-in to notorious Reddit-denouncer Sam Biddle’s epic Gawker rant, “No One Wants to Admit It, but Reddit Can’t Be Saved“:
It’s looking more and more like Ellen Pao was, in some sense, set up to fail by her male board of directors. Her predecessor Yishan Wong says it. A top Reddit engineer said it right after quitting. It might sound conspiratorial if it weren’t about this particular site.
But this is Reddit. To the site’s super-dedicated core, an overwhelmingly male group of very vocal power-users whose understanding of progressive politics is limited to the idea that their pirated ecchi torrents have just as much a right to bandwidth as Netflix, few things are more offensive than being told what to do by a woman. And when harassment was banned and their fat-hating subreddit was shut down, they plugged their ears and screamed and stomped and spammed swastikas until they got their way. (It obviously didn’t hurt that their way also happened to align with the interests of the site’s founders.)
So Ellen Pao’s first mistake might have been thinking she could ever actually lead Reddit. But Reddit can’t even be governed by the white guys who founded it, let alone by an Asian American woman who’d fought a highly public court battle over gender discrimination. The truth is that no one can run Reddit, because Reddit already has a boss: an organized, malignant band of the adolescent and adolescent-at-heart, ready to topple any would-be savior who attempts to clean house…
… Reddit isn’t a community. A community compromises; it changes; it adapts as it grows. Communities are sites of give and take. A community has a sense of common culture and purpose. What Pao found herself up against was not a community but a vicious, malevolent movement that can only accept direction in the form of upvotes. The extremists were not interested in compromise and unable to see why it was in their interests to make their favorite site a more welcoming place for new users. They could not open and would not budge—the idea of sacrificing the divine right to mock the obese was unfathomable, too much to bear…
To this increasingly vocal coterie, anything resembling compromise away from adolescent male white mores is seen as the fascistic social justice agenda. Never mind that no one is being asked to do anything more than grow up: Fucking grow up, you don’t really need giant jiggling breasts in your Xbox games. Fucking grow up, it’s obnoxious, boring and lazy to make fun of obese strangers. And fucking grow up: if you have to go 4chan to make the same stale jokes about the holocaust, you are no less free than you were the day before…
Even if you disagree with Biddle, it’s worth clicking over to read the whole thing, including links to some of the toxic history and an amazing illustration by Jim Cooke.
Omnes Omnibus
This is the evening that you go after Reddit? Interesting.
mclaren
As someone who views Reddit as an amusing occasional source of funny cat pictures and silly Game of Thrones memes, I couldn’t care less what happens to Reddit. If it vanishes, 10 essentially identical sites will take its place within a week.
As for becoming a member of Reddit or spending my valuable time upvoting or downvoting stuff…please. That’s like spending your life checking your Facebook status on your smartphone. Grownups have better things to do.
Anne Laurie
@Omnes Omnibus: Actually, I wrote this post up earlier this afternoon. Just seemed better suited for late-night than prime time.
Also, Sam Biddle is not Jordan Sargent.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anne Laurie: I did not equate Biddle and Sargent. Also, I just found the timing odd. No aspersions being cast.
Tommy
@mclaren:
I have been on the Internet since like the late 80s. Feel like I got some clue and my take of the site is the exact same as you. I tried to get into the place years and years ago but just couldn’t.
srv
Pretty sure my first Eternal September post at reddit was sometime in 2006. To think of the trillions of pixels spilt over reddit angst since then. It’s perhaps the only human endeavor that can match the output of the Sun.
This will be your civilization’s legacy.
burnspbesq
Has Austin Cobra posted anything on Reddit yet?
Omnes Omnibus
@srv: Our civilization?
srv
@burnspbesq: all day
Mike J
I find it hilarious that Pao wanted to keep profiting from the hate groups, but just keep them safely in the basement, while others at Reddit want to axe them. And then the fuckwits chased off one of the few people trying to defend them.
Frankensteinbeck
@Omnes Omnibus:
If you didn’t know srv was a morlock by now…
Omnes Omnibus
@Frankensteinbeck: I was pointing out the admission.
David Koch
Trump is ripping the shit outta the GOP
And it’s working:
David Koch
And when you thought the night couldn’t get better, even the conservative Fox admits:
mclaren
@srv:
Yes, when the alien cockroaches from Arcturus examine the remains of human civilization, they will discover that it was essentially all funny cat pictures.
smike
I live in Bastrop, TX, and I have found the last couple of days to be a big disappointment. I mean, now what am I supposed to do with all these sweets and flowers?
And where the hell are my Liberators?
Get it together, Jade Helm, if that is your real name.
Suzanne
@Tommy: You pissed me off last night for being a sexist dick. I don’t care what or whom you find sexy. I and other women do not exist in this world for your visual appreciation/enjoyment.
Stop being a fucking drunk. Just saying.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Drunk or douche? Accuracy matters.
Frankensteinbeck
@David Koch:
Unless Trump is much more organized than I give him credit for, he’ll peak early, flop in some spectacular fashion, and be replaced by the next Great White Hope before the primaries begin. 2012 was a series of wild incompetents crashing and burning one after another, until the merely poor politician was left standing. The question is – who is actually minimally competent in 2016’s clown car? I don’t think it’s Bush. The guy own-goals every five minutes. Georgy had a knack for recovering from his mistakes by making them look folksy. Jeb comes off as confused, weak, and too spoiled to let anyone tell him he has to watch his tongue. The Bushes are the BEST, darn it, and everything his brother did must be genius, and the lazy proles don’t understand just how much better their aristocrats are than them.
ruemara
You know, there’s always gonna be a cesspool of vile in the corners of the internet. You just don’t have to validate it with a massive stock valuation.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: I think he drinks alone then gets on the computer to jack off. Fucking obnoxious.
mclaren
@Frankensteinbeck:
As Jeet Heer tweeted:
NotMax
How many, many times have males seen/heard “you’re not a woman, so your analyses/explanations/aspersions carry little weight and even less experiential relevance/credibility and/or are skewed by virtue of your sex” or something very similar.
Shoe on the other foot re: generalizations about men.
For the record, have never been a Trekkie (not that there’s anything wrong with that), have been a Trekker since September of 1966.
mclaren
@ruemara:
Hey! How dare you say that about my Pokemon porn!
Frankensteinbeck
@mclaren:
That’s part of the problem. Jeb ain’t the rich, boring old man. He’s a spoiled rich brat. The dynamic that leads to the boring guys winning isn’t there. So who IS the boring guy who has enough brains to actually go for the goal, instead of spinning in circles yelling ‘woob woob woob’?
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Since when are they mutually exclusive?
NotMax
@mclaren
Ash slash stash cache?
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: It is late, but I confess that I entirely do not understand where you were going with that. It is probably on me..
SFAW
Maybe they’ll ask Brianna Wu to take her place?
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s not unlike “sticks nix hick pix.”
David Koch
@Frankensteinbeck: speaking of own-goals, Celia Sasic shockingly retired today at only age 27.
mclaren
@Frankensteinbeck:
Well, remember that Romney own-goaled himself right out of the election with that idiotic speech about “the takers” and “the 47 percent.”
But okay, I agree that Jeb Bush is even dumber than his brother — and that’s saying something. Chris Christie is obviously a fool, Rick Perry (who forgot which of the three cabinet departments he’d shut down) likewise, Ted Cruz may sound good for 3 or 4 minutes at a time but is widely hated within the GOP and doesn’t have a ghost of a clue about strategy (*cough* goverment shutdown fiasco *cough*), and then there are idiot lightweights like Santorum and Huckabee and Rand Paul who have never articulated a serious policy in their lives.
So by my reckoning that leaves Scott Walker and Marco Rubio. Of the two, Walker is the less damaged.
So if money isn’t an issue in the GOP nomination, my take is that Walker is likely to emerge as the likeliest candidate. But the thing is, for the GOP, money isn’t just everything, it’s the only thing. If Hannibal Lecter had enough money, the GOP would nominate him.
So it’s tough to tell. These guys worship filthy lucre with such sedulous devotion that Jeb’s billions worth of backing are likely to push him into the nomination regardless of everything else.
Mike J
Thank you Turner Classic movie for the earworm you gave me in your July coming attractions trailer,.
Nobody Really Cares if You Don’t go to the Party
Nothing to do with film noir or Shirley Temple or any movie being shown, just stupid catchy. Grrr.
Redshift
@smike: Similar report from a friend in Texas:
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: Good point.
Mandalay
That claim betrays a stunning ignorance (or wilful blindness) about what actually happened prior to Pao’s dismissal. Journalistic swill of the highest order.
SFAW
@Redshift:
Well, obviously, Jade Helm needs to up their game. I mean, all that work to take over
Nuevo AztlanTejas, and no one’s even noticing?Thanks, Obama!
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
You’re internet savvy (and no shrinking violet), thus ought to be no reason to explain the term slash in relation to internet pron.
Ash Ketchum is one of the main characters in the world of Pokemon.
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: Doesn’t help.
Tommy
@Suzanne: OK.
David Koch
@SFAW: Obama works in mysterious ways
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: Let’s try Harry Potter. If I’m writing fanfic, which I’m not (just original fic!), and I want Harry and Ron to have a relationship, that would be ‘slash fic’. As in, Harry/Ron. Or Harry/Draco. Or Hermione/(every male character).
It’s usually pretty poorly written and quite explicit and for something mostly written by teenage girls surprisingly gay.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tommy: No apology? No explanation? Wow.
Major Major Major Major
@Mandalay: Biddle’s an asshole and Valleywag is schlock of the highest order. I’m not trying to defend the seedy parts of Reddit or anything but 90% of what he writes is inaccurate apocalyptic bullshit about the bay area.
10% is accurate apocalyptic bullshit. This is not part of that.
Tommy
@David Koch: Yes he does. I live next to a huge military base. I am surprised we are not invading you.
Tommy
@Omnes Omnibus: Show me, you like the search feature here, what I said that was so rude.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tommy: Are you saying that Suzanne is lying?
Tommy
@Omnes Omnibus: You love to start fights don’t you. I am sure I said something that upset Suzanne. I wish I didn’t do that. The last thing I wanted to do.
But I will not bow down to you or others own who think I should do this or that.
Major Major Major Major
Oh lighten up, Francis. We’re all here every day. Now I don’t know if anybody was being an intransigent asshole or not, but in my experience if one were to have been being an intransigent asshole, there’s nothing wrong and indeed something admirable about acknowledging it and apologizing for it. Let’s not get our blood pressures any higher than they already are.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tommy: Any chance of you answering my question? Suzanne was insulted by your comments. I wasn’t. I found them thoughtless and sexist, But then I am just a guy.
I am sure Suzanne would like an explanation. You can handle it as you choose.
Jewish Steel
Fight! Fight! Fight!
Tommy
@Omnes Omnibus: I asked what did I say. I can’t comment on what I did when I don’t even know.
Major Major Major Major
@Jewish Steel: *hands Omnes folding chair*
Jewish Steel
@Major Major Major Major: I need to see some blood on the canvas or I’m going over to this “Reddit” I keep hearing about.
Major Major Major Major
@Jewish Steel: Throw down, big boy. It might be your own.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tommy: Seriously? I don’t mean to be rude, but you should reread your interactions with Suzanne from last night. I can tell you that she took offense. Go back and try to figure out why. Or don’t. Your choice.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: At least use the chair. It’s common courtesy.
Jewish Steel
@Major Major Major Major: Never when there is a lady involved. I have a strict policy of unqualified deference.*
*unless I’m feeling cranky
Major Major Major Major
@Jewish Steel: I don’t know, I saw a luchadora kick some major ass last night on the telly. You might want to reconsider.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: Nah, If he can’t come here and back up his shit, fuck him.
Jewish Steel
@Major Major Major Major: I managed to avoid untold number of deserved hidings from my peer group by being uncommonly quick. I’ll bet fear could motivate these old bones one more time if I was confronted by one of those mma or ufc Valkyries.
Major Major Major Major
@Jewish Steel: I was uncommonly quick, then I was also surprisingly strong around college age. Nowadays I’m a nice person to have around on a dark night in SF, which is unfortunately something you need to be if you’re gay :( but I can bolt with the best of them.
As any self defense course will teach you, the first step to not losing a fight is not getting in a fight.
Jewish Steel
@Major Major Major Major: Word. I also have janitor strength. I pity the miscreant who hold still long enough to use my Wring The Mop move. I will also dust a motherfucker if he presents me with a level, uncluttered surface.
Major Major Major Major
@Jewish Steel: you could also just grab the mop by the part just above the mop itself and hit them as hard as possible in the outer part of the knee and then switch stances and go for the throat. #kravmaga
Jewish Steel
@Major Major Major Major: Screeching at an assailant in the style of Gilbert Gottfried is in my repertoire as well. #enterthedragon
Major Major Major Major
@Jewish Steel: I prefer guttural yells and
HEY WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOURE DOING HEY CAN SOMEBODY CALL THE POLICE FUCK YOU GET AND STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME THIS GUY IS GRABBING ME
Usually works. I’m not a small guy and I don’t put myself in traditionally dangerous situations but it still comes up.
And then of course at the end of the day if you gotta kick ’em in the nuts and throw them into traffic and run away, well, you gotta.
Actual story. Seriously SF is fucked up right now.
ETA: he is fine, the street was just the only direction I had, it was a red light, police report and everything I’m not a murderer
tybee
@Major Major Major Major:
a couple of days ago you were commenting about paying full price in a bar for a non-alcoholic beverage.
i have found that telling the bar keep that you’re the designated driver for a group of miscreants will get free cokes and such. ymmv.
Major Major Major Major
@tybee: I try not to lie, so when I tell them I’m just not drinking right now but can you give me something colored so we won’t have to have that conversation, I get charged.
I only fight dirty in fights :P
Thanks though, I’ve done that before and yeah it does work. In the bar’s interest to have an adult around.
raven
@tybee: I just quit going to bars. . .except to meet you and your bride!
tybee
@raven:
i didn’t realize we were breaking one of your prohibitions. :)
i have been in a few bars and not had any alcohol but i try not to make a habit of that….
kc
Not in the mood to read criticism of another site from Gawker or anyone associated with it.
kc
@Anne Laurie:
Biddle is an asshole in his own right.
raven
@tybee: I enjoyed it immensely! My wife wants to go see some singer at the Georgia Theater tonite and the doors open at 11. I have absolutely NO interest in going but we’ll see.
kc
@Mandalay:
Gawker.
kc
@Omnes Omnibus:
It would be awesome if you could refrain from nagging the hell out of Tommy in every goddamn thread on here. It’s boring.
different-church-lady
Wait, are we talking about Reddit or the modern Republican Party?
different-church-lady
@Major Major Major Major: Wow, I am learning so much right now…
Ramalama
I almost never get any upvotes on reddit, but what I do get is help. All I have to do is talk about a problem with a website I’m working on, or an electronics thing, and there have been many instances, and I’ve got immediate, expert advice. I try to reciprocate when I can. I love the AMA series. But yeah, there are many men-ish sounding characters who do talk an awful lot about guns on various channels there.
Joel
Isn’t reddit just Usenet with a fresh coat of paint?
WereBear
@Joel: LOL. yes.
RSA
@Joel:
I wondered the same thing! It sure sounds like it.
Matt McIrvin
@Joel: Google+ (mostly) reminds me of the better parts of Usenet circa 1994 (for good and ill).
Reddit reminds me of the rest of Usenet circa 1994.
Pogonip
@Major Major Major Major: The mop-fu is strong in this one!
lol
@Mandalay:
ORLY? The sexist/racist bullshit started the day she was hired, intensified when she banned a handful of the worst subreddits and reached a peak when they inaccurately blamed her for Taylor’s firing.
But I get it. If you won’t stand up for /r/rapingwomen, who will?
Bobby Thomson
@Mike J: Love her.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
you need to get out on the intertubes more Ann. Getting laid in real life requires that, as opposed to the fast and easy cyber sex they get on line with bored house wives and other guys pretending to be women.
Anyway, as someone who deals with groups of young men every day, their main complaint is the older folks treating them like scum for the crime of being young and dumb. Women seem to really delight in that for some reason with lines “you don’t measure up as a man to me” Fun stuff when it’s a house wife who never held a job telling that to an Iraq War vet. For some odd reason they resent that. Ah, if these kids only saw these beatings as the acts of kindness they are. Right Ann?
DLew On Roids
I am no longer officially young, but when I was–not too long ago–neither I nor anyone I knew had this perspective. I’m all about some good “kids these days” rants, but if you want to gripe about the media that pretend every black kid is walking around in baggy pants, maybe you should check your own generalizations at the door.
The peculiar victimization complex of some young white men is usually amusing and occasionally terrifying (since they seem to be inclined to own guns and use them when they get angry enough), so it’s certainly worth calling out. But let’s not act like every young white male is an MRA or Gamergater unless there’s data to back it up. Dismissing whole classes of people is how the other guys got into their demographic mess.
Barry
@Frankensteinbeck: “Georgy had a knack for recovering from his mistakes by making them look folksy. Jeb comes off as confused, weak, and too spoiled to let anyone tell him he has to watch his tongue. The Bushes are the BEST, darn it, and everything his brother did must be genius, and the lazy proles don’t understand just how much better their aristocrats are than them. ”
Dubya also made dumb comment after dumb comment; the press covered for him.
Think of how many hundreds of millions of dollars the Bush family and allies will throw at this campaign.
IMHO the GOP nomination is Jeb’s to lose.
Barry
@Mandalay: “That claim betrays a stunning ignorance (or wilful blindness) about what actually happened prior to Pao’s dismissal. Journalistic swill of the highest order. ”
WordPress trimmed off the part of your comment where you explained that claim.
Another Holocene Human
@mclaren: It’s not that Cruz is bad at strategy, it’s that his ego is too large. He completely underestimated Barack Obama, for one thing. I guess that is bad at strategy in a way. If all of your assumptions are wildly off your plan may fail.
Another Holocene Human
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Some of those housewives who never had a job have massive personality disorders. I should know, my mother was one. So rather than blaming half of the human race, be aware that predators lurk online, and some of them are verbal (psychological) abusers, not just creeps looking to meet a teenager to kidnap them.
scav
I’m personally rather wondering what exact supreme power these women that “never have held a job” possess because that’s presumably a dwindling portion of the populace. I’m also rather wondering what having a job necessarily adds to their ability to look a person up and down and form an opinion about them. (In some ways, not having a job just means more time to indulge in other activities and hobbies, one of which might be knowing and observing a lot of men).
Another Holocene Human
@scav: There are scummy people who live off of others. Some of them are men, just as some are women. Some of them of both sexes are on disability, so scamming off the taxpayer. (There are plenty of people with disabilities who can’t get steady, bill-paying work because job discrimination is a thing or their disability puts them out as soon as they get on and FMLA doesn’t kick in until one year. They often spend lots of time online. But there are also a number of people who scam disability with the help of their doctors. It’s probably more in some parts of the country than others.)
If you get involved in high time sink online communities you will run across these non-job-having, no-account people in their 30s some of whom are very accomplished manipulators who specialize in emotionally preying on naive young people. (Sometimes financially too, but in a minor way because young people don’t have $$$)
If you are heterosexual, you may assume it’s only the opposite sex. It is not.
These people are abusers. They lurk in online communities looking for people to lure in and then fuck with.
You’ll find a lot more relief going to support groups for victims of Narcissists than looking through MRA forums for new ways to say “Women suck!!!!!”
scav
@Another Holocene Human: Ah, that lot. Does rather loom large digitally I would imagine. But, equal opportunity, which is what I rather suspected, and I’d imagine they come in a variety of ages too. The cri de coeur against the amazing unrelenting social power of June Cleaver was just not making sense.
Another Holocene Human
@scav: As I think about it, some of the most insidious online manipulators I’ve seen DO have jobs but are unhappy and don’t have much of a life other than online. I mean, depends, though, if your social world is online gaming like WOW then being unemployed really helps.
Citizen Alan
@Major Major Major Major:
Guy On Guy Is Hot
Calouste
@David Koch:
Under the common assumption that everything a Republican does is projection, Trump college transcripts are going make interesting reading. And by interesting, I mean hilarious.
wenchacha
Well, I used to have a job, with decent pay, before becoming a mother about 25 years ago. Just a housewife since then. I am no doubt brimming with neuroses and disorders.
Fuck that shit. Seriously.
Suzanne
@Tommy: I was talking about my strength training and how i am beginning my to see great results. You then proceeded to tell me exactly how sexy you think that is. I can’t escape the damn male gaze even when you can’t see me.
The Other Chuck
I like Star Trek. I do not like most other Star Trek fans, in no small part due to things like the Trekkie/Trekker nonsense. What’s my label?