this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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Not The Onion

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I made a comment to this effect the other day. Scrolling through this community, out of about the 10 most recent posts, I see one that is borderline oniony and the rest are just straight up news, mostly US politics-related.

Is this OK? Is this what this community is for? I ask because I want to see can't-believe-it's-real headlines, but if this is going to be another doom scroll bad news sub I'm going to leave and look elsewhere. Just curious to hear people's feelings on this before I do.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 6 months ago (1 children)

upvoting because i too want to see more true onion-y posts here even if it means fewer posts overall. the almost onion-y posts tend to not be funny at all, just pure depressing irony, and amass votes in a circle jerk nature, essentially making this another news sub as OP notes.

i get that “truth is stranger than fiction” but that doesn’t mean that the every time the steady progression of the west into fascism is recorded to the media it needs to be posted here. and also it’s excessively us-centric which is both boring for americans and unwelcoming to a global audience.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (3 children)

It may just be that many people posting don't exactly decipher between the true ethos of the community and something their view as, like you said, stranger than fiction. I would say it's more on us, the community, to use the upvote/downvote function to help curate what we view as content within the spirit of the community.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Personally I think the upvote/downvote thing breaks down in a world with an all feed. Many people don't check what community something is coming from, which is why moderation is another important factor.

If other people like how it is now that's fine, it just isn't for me.

[–] Live_your_lives 3 points 6 months ago

I liked the method some subreddits have where there's always a pinned comment that community members can upvote/downvote for how relevant it is.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

I agree, I have heard more people mentioning that they use the 'All' feed than any other

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

sort of, but i would support the mods if they tried to take action themselves.

the saddest downfall of a community was r/MURDEREDBYWORDS. used to be the funniest shit with the most beautifully crafted comebacks. but then poor moderation let politics start creeping in. the politics was fine and still funny at first. but politics gets engagement, it starts bubbling to the top, and then the quality of content took a nosedive while engagement remained high. now the community is totally derailed to the point that whenever i transitioned from reddit to fedi, i preemptively blocked whatever the parallel sub here was.

hated to see that comedy sub just become “republican bad,” and would hate to see the same happen here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Yeah fair enough. I thought about mentioning the mods curating the content here but didn't for not wanting to tell someone how to run their community, but I think you're right on that.

[–] glimse 4 points 6 months ago

Upvotes and downvotes aren't enough. People from All (and plenty of subscribers) will upvote anything in any community if they like it, it does not matter if it fits the theme.