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The intelligence level on reddit has hit rock bottom. That's not to say lemmy instances are the opposite. It's just that reddit has reached what must be some kind of end stage. Someone else posted already about being met with blank stares about technical topics. It applies to pretty much any topic.
Not being very informed about a certain topic is not a problem in itself. Reddit seems to have internalized some sort of personality. One where the social milieu is about petty squabbles. They don't care about the topic itself but coming away from the replies feeling like they're the bigger dog who barked louder. More often than not I find myself just letting them have their victory. There's no real discussion happening anyways.
In the first half of reddits existence it was ridiculed for being the site full of neckbeards who think too highly of themselves on account of nerds being smart-aleck nerds. What I've seen the past several years goes to show that it isn't a nerd thing. As reddit has become more a sample of any given part of the population, this trait of reddit has not changed. People go to reddit thinking they're engaged in some kind of high intellectual discourse simply because reddit is supposed to be that.
I can't tell if these things are a trait of reddit which bled over from the other social media like Facebook and Twitter. I never used those. Just about any other platform is better compared to reddit. Whether that be lemmy instances or small forums. Could be some kind of social media mind rot or something. I don't know but that's what I attribute it to.
Absolutely. You used to be able to reliably go to the reddit comments section for more information/context, clarifications/corrections/alternative takes, sources/citations, etc. on pretty much any post. "The real TIL/joke/story is in the comments" and all that.
Nowadays the reddit comments section is all jokes (not even good ones), reaction gifs (not even relevant ones), and non sequiturs. I'm unclear what percentage is bots and what is oblivious people with nothing useful to add but a compulsion to contribute anyway.
I keep visiting the reddit comments section anyway out of habit, and nearly every time I walk away feeling disappointed and a little dirty. Fortunately Lemmy's comments are more like the old days when you at least felt like you were conversing with a human (and a literate one at that). Unfortunately outside of a few niche topics, Lemmy is severely lacking in subject matter experts, so there isn't anywhere near the same level of additional context and fact-checking on most posts that used to exist on reddit. I don't know if this is a demographics problem or a "we're under the critical mass threshold" problem; I assume it's both.
I'm convinced (without evidence) that the bots who have wholesale taken over that aren't just copying and pasting are LLMs instructed to respond "in the sarcastic tone of a redditor".
With bots being the majority, any actual human who enters the conversation either emulates that style to fit in, or to seek the upvotes/approval of everyone else who gets it for responding in that way.
The LLMs then train off this new, more toxic engagement going forward, creating an Ouroboros-esque race to the bottom
Yeah this is pretty much spot on. People go to reddit to win, not to talk.