I've often seen this comment parroted, but the only reason people try and have "respect" on Reddit is because it ties in to imaginary internet points. Not saying there's not netiquette or whatever on Reddit, but with the amount of things even on serious threads or breaking news threads that are just a race to get karma by idiots dropping their le may may 2 sentence "funny" and not contributting at all, having read the article, etc.... Well Reddit is right there with it. People are more careful what they say on here because if you type out a wall of text that goes against a hivemind or circlejerk you'll eat 20 downvotes and not get any replies, or if you do, they'll be 2 sentence may may's from some 17 year old looking for a karma grab and not wanting to engage in discussion.

Now youtube is sort of the same, jokes and what not get upvoted to the top of videos, but there's not a pretense there in the first place that there's actually going to be a discussion. It IS a "leave your comment and go" sort of thing. That might result in people using the N word or saying something stupid, but there's no false sense of bullshit. That you have to make your 2 sentence le funny to fit in or eat downvotes from children.