There’s something off about Reddit. Either I grew up or it became hollow from within. Just angry people scolding each other all the time.

There are some true gems however but usually in smaller focused subreddits.

Yeah, the smaller subreddits are good. The problem is it’s basically killed off alternative forums.

I never thought I’d miss vBulletin so much.

Think any platform becomes terrible over time once it hits a certain level of mass appeal. I loved Reddit and Quora in 2010.

It was inevitable given it's a top 7 most popular site.

The reality is, the masses, the real world, the average person. Is an asshole.

It doesn't reflect in the real world, because people learn to hide their assholeness at a very early age (Or they learn how to get punched in the face).

On an anonymous forum. You don't have to hide your assholeness.

Frankly it's amazing the site never devolved into 4chan. I attribute that to all the people doing free labor --> mods.

They switched their best sorting algorithm to be engagement based rather than upvote based [1]. Upvotes are just one of many metrics, but heavy comment interaction is another. It incentivizes rage bait and performing for the crowd with every comment and post. They also switched into an almost purely moderator curated frontpage [2] rather than allowing users to vote.

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/o5tjcn/evolving_the_b...

2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36040282

You should try Lemmy. It feels a lot like Reddit did in like 2012. Small, but a great community.

I've wondered the same thing, but you growing up definitely has to be a factor.

> Just angry people scolding each other all the time.

This really does describe it perfectly. I don't know about others, but focusing on my career pulled me out of a relatively low-income and dysfunctional environment. Reddit too often reminds me of people I used to know in real life.

It's been so many years since then, and finding and living a better life was so intertwined with my young adulthood that I almost convinced myself people like that don't exist in real life anymore. I thought the whole world had moved on, but search results nowadays prioritize Reddit enough that I'm routinely proven wrong.

Contrary to popular belief, I don't think most of the stuff on there is fake. Those people probably really are like that. Certain ways of thinking can become so normalized that they don't even see what there is to be ashamed about. What I sense the most on there is a lot of stress and the resulting irrational fears that pour out of people when they feel too much pressure. People under a seemingly endless and vague threat will go a little nuts and start to swat at anything that disturbs their worldview.

Reddit turned way more into an echo chamber over time. The moderators and the downvote system destroyed the site. The shift from free speech, libertarian and anarchist ideology into heavily left leaning definitely didn't help.