I have never tried to commit suicide. I have a rational fear of death that has stopped me from ever progressing along that path. At times this fear is not sufficient to dispel an inability to cope with the situations I experience, to dispel a frantic panicked thought that maybe death would be better than this.

I have good moments. I don't live in a world of struggle - I am more a drain on the good will of others than any sort of victim of life or circumstance in general. Yet most of the time I am not in a good state, unless I am distracting myself with things like reddit or video games. I think of myself as terrible person for this.

In the five years I've been using this website, I've not had any sweet experiences or a feeling of community here. To me, redditors on the whole come across as snobbishly superior, or circlejerk over dumb people and things, or create pun threads (or more recently reaction/relevant gif threads). This is not to say there are not rare moments of humanity, or times when redditors coalesce on a front-page post and do some kind if sometimes misguided things for people. But to me it leaves a somewhat saccharine taste to hear reddit praised as a bastion of community bonding.

People keep coming back to reddit because it's a constant stream of stimulation. This is why the images dominate the front pages, rather than boring articles. It's why the comments are always highly emotional. It doesn't have anything to do with a sense of community at all.

In a community, don't you usually know people's names? I only know a few celebrity redditors and moderators/admins. I've added people as friends on here, and occasionally I see the little red F, but I don't keep track of them, and don't even remember most of them unless I see them - reddit isn't built to focus on that. It's built around content and knee-jerk lowest-common-denominator upvoting, and of course in the larger subreddits also power-tripping moderators. :P

I don't know. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm the one who is making my reddit experience banal by not actively trying to be a part of some sort of community. I never did that button thing because the whole deal seemed idiotic. Maybe that's my problem; too judgmental.

Sorry for this rant. I just felt a strong urge to interrupt what seemed like an echo chamber to me. I've also been awake all night unable to sleep, so maybe I shouldn't click "save" but whatever.