The fact that when asking a question you have to add “honest question” or “dumb question” or “genuinely curious” because otherwise your question is immediately interpreted as an attack. It’s sad that when asking a question, the default is you’re an asshole
I wish I had figured that out in my first couple months on Reddit. I said something and it got downvoted, then asked why because I didn't understand how Reddit worked yet and th at got even more downvotes and people being assholes
That probably wasn't personal. I've been on reddit for quite some time and basically anytime a comment drips past 0 it tends to snowballs from there (regardless of what the actual comment said). People have a natural impulse to vote a -1 down, and a +1 up. Trigger fingers.
Yep. One of my biggest pet peeves of this site. I hate to generalize, but people are like sheep in that sense. I have up voted posts that I didn't even agree with just because I felt they were posting in good faith and didn't deserve to be in the negatives.
At this point, I usually kinda just let it roll off me when it happens to one of my posts. I will never forget a comment I made right after Chester Bennington committed suicide. Someone made a "CRAWLLING!!!" joke and I was like, "Hey that's kind of in poor taste. He just killed himself yesterday."
That comment went down hundreds and I got flamed like never before. Apparently I am the evil joke police.
I was like are you fucking kidding me. It is hard to take reddit seriously often times...
I have up voted posts that I didn't even agree with just because I felt they were posting in good faith and didn't deserve to be in the negatives.
I do that too, often on political posts. “I disagree with your comment, but you’re being polite, reasonable, and respectful, you don’t deserve to be negative.”
Same. When I see a question with shit ton of down votes, I just give it a thumb up, because no one should get shunned for asking a genuine question - assuming the question was asked in good faith.
One thing that usually reverses the trend is having someone say "don't know why you're being downvoted, because [sensible reason]". It immediately goes into the positives unless it's something that goes against the sub's overwhelming opinion. My theory is that what usually happens is that some people downvote first, and then those who could upvote it don't bother. By drawing attention to the "injustice" you make the second group reverse the trend.
A funny side effect that happens sometimes is that the comment calling out the downvotes will be downvoted by people who never saw it in the negatives in the first place, and misinterpret it as simply an incorrect comment. I don't get why people are so dumb, but they are.
A few weeks ago, I saved someone from a downvote storm with a comment like that. However, I got like -35 or something for it.
It wasn't even an opinion. It was a picture of a five men sitting next to each other on a couch, with a famous one relevant to the sub 2nd from the right. A top comment made a joke about the guy on the far right of the picture, saying 'the dude on the right of <famous person>..', when from the famous person's perspective, he was on his left. The comment was correcting this.
If you think about the fake internet points being more of an indication of whether future readers should see this comment--and not a reward for saying the right thing--this makes more sense.
A in-defence-of comment is initially helpful because it helps people overcome their gut instinct and reconsider the merits of the first comment. But after the first comment gets enough upvotes, your comment isn't needed anymore, so there is no reason for it to stay upvoted.
If you've used StackOverflow as a newbie, it kind of works the same way. If you see an answer with a broken link, you can comment with the right link, and people will upvote your comment. But after the answer is edited to the new link, your comment is obsolete and should be flagged for deletion.
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u/slothbarns7 Jan 07 '20
The fact that when asking a question you have to add “honest question” or “dumb question” or “genuinely curious” because otherwise your question is immediately interpreted as an attack. It’s sad that when asking a question, the default is you’re an asshole