I glanced at your profile, because I was thinking about this post and how Reddit has changed over the years. I too have been on Reddit for a long time. I remember the overtly racist subs and things like r jailbait. You see somebody posts in r cntn you know they were racist.

I spent years at forums before I came to Reddit, and I feel like in the early days Reddit would extend assholes unwarranted benefit of the doubt.

The first time you see sea lioning*, it can look pretty innocuous. Bad faith arguments are chosen for their veneer of being reasonable arguments.

I know that various Reddit tools have been around, but I just feel that lots of Reddit users are more grown up now. (I do wonder how much the user base is aging literally)

*back in preReddit days, I didn’t have the term sea lioning, but we were aware of bad faith bullshit arguments. We called them crypto.

Crypto nazis might argue holocaust denialism starting out by just asking questions.

Cryptoracists make racist arguments.

Etc

Sometimes, it was because of rules, like lots of places don’t like nazis or holocaust denialism or open racism, but there were also places that allowed open fascist arguments.

But also crypto global warming deniers exist because it’s an easy way to argue. You don’t have to prove anything. You’re just asking questions.

Anyway, I think a lot of shit that would fly on Reddit, just doesn’t fly as much as it used to, and that makes me happy.

Hopefully my long rambling post isn’t too boring.