created by Fickle-Syllabub6730 on 08/01/2025 at 06:03 UTC
59 upvotes, 35 top-level comments (showing 25)
I'm a long time Redditor (I change my account every year or so) since about 2009. For my whole life, people seeking intellectual, high level discussion on the internet seem to talk about it like the unwashed 9gag masses are always nipping at our feet. We go to one forum or website or subreddit, and they follow us there.
Obviously, we've all seen the effects of this. The main subreddits have had bottom tier discourse for many years now. Even mostly text based discussions devolve into poor writing and ineffective communication. A place for pretty well-read nerds and technology enthusiasts and college students with broad intellectual curiosity turned into a lot of nonsense discussion and people throwing in their non-sequiturs and just poorly thought, ephemeral discussion.
The question I've always had is what attracts these people to something like Reddit in the first place? 15 years ago, Reddit was mostly pedantic programmers and grad students sharing Richard Feynman quotes and XKCD comics and talking about the philosophy of science. What about that website and community begins to attract anti-intellectual people, people who apply very little critical thinking to their every day life?
At it's core I'm wondering why this dynamic seems to have happened all throughout the internet. Aren't mainstream average people turned off by a nerdy ethos from a website? If it was a barbecue with 100 people, and 5 nerds were in a corner talking about Python and singletons, I wouldn't expect the Reality TV show addict and Prom Queen and jocks to take over their table. But it happened with Reddit. Why? Why doesn't it happen to, say, hackernews?
Comment by alittleslowerplease at 08/01/2025 at 11:26 UTC
130 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Eternal september is not about "less intellectual people", idk how you would come to this conclusion.
ES describes the phenomenon of an endless stream of **new** users which are not familiar with the rules and culture, and their impact on those communitys they join.
Comment by Sarkos at 08/01/2025 at 08:54 UTC
88 upvotes, 3 direct replies
I've also been on Reddit since 2009 and I think you are misremembering, it was never just high-brow intellectual discussion. I distinctly recall comments at that time being full of puns, novelty accounts, rage comics, that sort of thing.
/r/TrueReddit was created in 2009 because the creators already thought Reddit had gone to the dogs!
Nerd culture was also going mainstream at the time, the internet was no longer a niche thing, the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter films had been wildly successful and the MCU had just kicked off.
Reddit became more and more popular, and with increased popularity came more average people and relatively fewer intellectuals. IMHO this is the heart of Eternal September, a good website attracts more users, and more users dilutes the quality of the userbase.
Comment by CupBeEmpty at 08/01/2025 at 08:07 UTC
40 upvotes, 0 direct replies
On Reddit I have found it is generally crappy moderation. My sub has grown a lot but we have a good core of moderators as well as updated rules that keep the most egregious garbage out of the sub. A lot of subs seem to have given up any semblance of not just letting it become a free for all of bots and idiots.
Like literally no curation or standards.
Comment by AbyssalRedemption at 08/01/2025 at 08:15 UTC
11 upvotes, 4 direct replies
I have a question for you: where are the *actual* online spaces for intellectual discourse these days? I've searched a fair while, but so far it seems as though near every major site has been infested by the populations you're talking about.
Comment by scrolling_scumbag at 08/01/2025 at 18:03 UTC
12 upvotes, 1 direct replies
15 years ago, Reddit was mostly pedantic programmers and grad students sharing Richard Feynman quotes and XKCD comics and talking about the philosophy of science.
No it wasn't. Here is Reddit 15 years ago, January 8th, 2010 courtesy of the Wayback Machine.
There's a few more science-related news articles, and 2 /r/programming threads... but a lot of the stuff on Reddit has always been junk content. Lame-ass jokes, shitty memes, political fart huffing and witch hunting, stupid questions on /r/AskReddit, all of these are present in this snapshot from 15 years ago.
I'll give you that the percentage of utter junk content on the front page has increased. Maybe from ~80% to 95%+ of Reddit's front page. On old.reddit there used to be 2-3 interesting items per page of 25 links on /r/popular back in the day, now it's commonly zero.
But to act like Reddit was this bastion of intelligent discourse, witty banter, and smart scientists I think is incredibly rose-tinted. The one thing that has **not** changed about Reddit over all these years, is the average Redditor disparaging other average Redditors as morons and simpletons, and viewing themselves as intellectually superior to everyone else on this platform. "Discourse" on this site has always revolved around semantic misunderstandings (often intentional), straw men, and ad hominem personal attacks.
Redditors do not and have never understood the scientific method or had respectable discussions about science. It's always been a religious worship kind of deal, where science is only valuable to users insofar as it can be used to directly shut down organized religion or prove whatever preconceived biases they have. This fits in perfectly with Reddit's previous worship of general science communicators like Neil Degrasse Tyson, Elon Musk, and Bill Nye (who is probably the only one still in Reddit's good graces at this point).
Most notable I think has been the change in format of this junk content. We have far less image template memes, gifs, YouTube videos, and articles. And far more screenshots of other social media sites, short-form videos lifted from TikTok or Reels, and obviously AI-generated stories. The general tone has changed too, and rage-baiting is the name of the game on Reddit nowadays, which is par for internet platforms as a whole, due to algorithmic boosting and a natural human attraction to this content. Which was covered excellently (and better than I can restate) in the book You Should Quit Reddit, which has a chapter examining the rise of "outrage porn" on Reddit.
Tl;dr: Reddit has always been mostly low-effort junk content, it probably sucks a little more than it used to, but mostly it just sucks in different ways than it used to.
Comment by nosecohn at 08/01/2025 at 09:28 UTC*
9 upvotes, 1 direct replies
As a long-time moderator of a subreddit that tries to promote more intellectual discussion, I'll offer some observations:
Comment by Das_Mime at 08/01/2025 at 08:47 UTC
28 upvotes, 3 direct replies
I'm continuing to notice that a lot of questions are based on premises that might not actually be true.
To what extent is Eternal September a real phenomenon and to what extent is it a perception on the part of users?
Comment by jgerrish at 08/01/2025 at 14:43 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
It's partially an adverse selection problem as in The Market for Lemons[1].
1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
It's not that the newcomers were "less intellectual". They're just newbies. The issue was there weren't enough old timers willing to stick around, or they were just outnumbered, and teach the new people about netiquette. So it created a feedback loop where there were more and more new people. For the Eternal September it was new freshmen and others.
Honestly, I was a newcomer at one time. WATTCP, Trumpet Winsock, etc. Older than most, but younger than many. I wasn't writing my own BSD PPP script, you know?
And that time was magical. As I'm sure it was for those damn kids and their Eternal September.
As we approach the possible era of microkernels and bountiful rich web services I'm sure I'm going to throw up my hands at some point and just hope I have enough money saved up to grumble on my couch and elliptical, you know?
Comment by Aternal at 08/01/2025 at 06:34 UTC
34 upvotes, 3 direct replies
It's pseudo-intellectualism. Intellectual discussion does not, has not, and will not ever take place on Reddit. This is a kangaroo court, not a lyceum.
Don't pick around the bronies, Minecraft, creepshots, rage comics, rgw buttholes, enlightened by my own intelligence. Gonna head over to reddit and spank it to some buttholes then watch Richard Feynman insult someone and chortle to myself for a while as a fully matured human being bonding with others over not masturbating for a month.
Comment by didiinthesky at 08/01/2025 at 10:24 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I joined reddit in 2017 when the IMDb message boards closed down, on which I to be very active. I know a lot of people decided to check out reddit for movie/TV discussion around that time. I guess the fact that you can make a subreddit about literally any subject has very broad appeal.
I'm not saying I'm not intellectual, but I do enjoy more light hearted discussions. Like most people. I do think the quality of discussion has gone down a bit over the years. Or maybe I'm just noticing it more now the newness has worn off.
Comment by Kijafa at 08/01/2025 at 15:56 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
So I propose that the forum cycle follows the same cycle we see with gentrification in urban settings. I have really only anecdotal evidence, and I'm probably missing some of the true nuance of gentrification, but you asked to now you get to read my take.
You start with a core of users who are really knowledgeable and passionate about a subject and they build a community around it. This is like the "true bohemian" gentrification stage. Over time, if the subject is interesting, the userbase will become more and more broad. Older users will welcome the new users because any community that does not bring in fresh blood is doomed to stagnation and eventual death.
The new users streaming in tend to absorb the culture, but aren't always as knowledgeable. This is like the "cool chaser" stage of gentrification. For instance with reddit you start getting the memes about programming language stereotypes. It's funny for people familiar with the actual usage in real environments, but it's also funny for people who don't really know about real-world coding but are learning about these languages in school.
The memes will start to appeal to the least common denominator, and will start being more general instead of specifically focused. This is like the "yuppie invasions" stage of gentrification. At this point an OT (off topic) board will be made, or like a "memes" specific containment board for shitposting. If the posts in that OT board are funny enough, that will start to be the part of the site that gets the most engagement. If there's nothing preventing it, the new users will adopt the culture of the containment board before adopting the culture of the larger community. As there is a larger userbase for lulz than for in-depth intellectual/technical discussion, more and more users will take on the containment culture, until those users outnumber the original users which in most instances happens pretty quick. I think this was definitely true for reddit by at least 2013-2016. I think if you made the "putting Descartes before the whores" joke most users now would be like "Who's Descartes? Why are you calling them whores and not sex workers? And why is this even funny?"
At this point the community will be known for it's funny nerd memes, and more people will come for the jokes and not the deep discussions. This is like the "corporate takeover" stage of gentrification. There will be echoes of what the site used to be, but the people who originally built the community will be long gone (if they can find somewhere else to go). The thing that used to be the heart of the community will be repackaged for mass consumption, but will lack a lot of the substance of what used to be the community. This is where we are now.
I don't think this is unique to reddit, or even the internet. This is what happens to subcultures that have something interesting going on. It's happened to music, dance, sports, tabletop gaming (WH40K currently getting culturally gentrified) and IMO it's basically how things tend to go in a society that loves to consume culture and where companies realize they can monetize that consumption.
Could it be prevented? I don't really think so. Or at least not without great difficulty. Communities that keep out newcomers don't last long, especially online. You need growth to keep culture dynamic, and trying to gatekeep really isn't very effective in the long term.
Comment by TubbyPiglet at 08/01/2025 at 17:04 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
People want to be heard and understood. It’s a fundamental driver of human behaviour.
I’ve believed for a long time now (a decade of using Reddit) that most people come here to be heard, rather than to listen/learn/understand or engage in good conversation.
They are filling a gap in their needs.
Comment by broooooooce at 08/01/2025 at 06:23 UTC
7 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Fascinating question. I can't speak for the other places, but it may have been partly due to how skeevy this place used to be. Free speech (and this place *used* to be the Wild West in that regard) and porn just appeal to a wider audience and a more 4chan-type of demographic.
Fwiw, I'm with you. I was more about xkcd and don't really like to mix porn with my social media. But, to each their own.
Comment by screaming_bagpipes at 08/01/2025 at 15:04 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I made a related post[1] about how subreddits are best when they're small or growing exponentially, which i think might answer your question.
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/s/ErPn4xuQPk
If we take that to be true, it follows that most people will experience the "i joined and it was great for a while" until the exponential growth necessarily stops. Lmk your thoughts
Comment by Fat_Kid_Hot_4_U at 08/01/2025 at 15:48 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Reddit has intentionally moved towards being a more profitable, popular website. It's not supposed to be a website for autistic college students like it was 15 years ago. Reddit is trying its best to become Tik Tok with different branding.
Comment by badgirlmonkey at 08/01/2025 at 20:04 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I disagree. Looking back on old Reddit comments is so shocking. There is a lot of rapey jokes and slurs, as well as unfunny puns that aged horribly.
Comment by creamofbunny at 08/01/2025 at 11:29 UTC
7 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Stupid people overestimate their intelligence.
Intelligent people underestimate it
Comment by yfce at 08/01/2025 at 18:00 UTC*
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Is it possible you were just younger and less discerning?
I've been on Reddit for about 15 years. Reddit has never been a high-brow intellectual place of discussion or curiosity. It was dominated by STEM types, so on paper it did skew more educated, but there wasn't much intellectual curiosity outside STEM spheres. If anything, the skewing toward math/eng/science meant that the average Redditor was even less capable of substantive analysis and rhetoric/writing skills. The skew younger and whiter also meant that discussions on things like gender politics, racial politics, religion, or really anything else outside the STEM cis male engineer bubble were extremely shallow and one-note.
Rage comics and advice animals were considered core to Reddit culture. Subs like Jailbait proliferated. You could barely post a photo of a woman without someone telling you whether they would. Novelty usernames were comedy gold, especially if they were also explicit. When celebrity nudes leaked in 2014, Reddit was the first port of call and users coined it "the fappening." Pseudo-intellectualism and r/Iamverysmart type cringe posts were rampant (i.e., "In this moment, I am euphoric"). The top comment on relationship posts tended to be along the lines of money, she's manipulating you by bringing up your 2 week old baby, leave her, lawyer up and get a paternity test before she takes all of your hard earned money."
As Reddit grew, it attracted more variable perspectives (older people with real-world life experience, women, humanities majors, non-Americans, etc) and the discourse has now substantially improved.
Also, I don't think you understand what the Eternal September effect is. It refers to the continued influx of new users who don't know the rules and norms. But not knowing that emoji usage is considered cringe on Reddit doesn't make you dumb, it just means you're new to Reddit. The eternal September effect does not refer to people being fundamentally stupid or "low culture" subreddits like a reality TV subreddit.
Comment by [deleted] at 08/01/2025 at 06:41 UTC*
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by _minca8028 at 08/01/2025 at 06:44 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I’m guessing you’re a millennial. The internet doesn’t cater to us anymore. Time to move on.
Comment by yeah_youbet at 08/01/2025 at 14:10 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I disagree that less intellectual discussion happens on websites as a whole. It either stays the same or grows, you just don't notice it because less intellectual discussion happens and grows at a higher velocity as a website becomes popular.
It doesn't happen to hackernews because that website is not blowing up as a platform, certainly let alone in the mainstream. If one day it does start gathering mainstream success, maybe you'll see the same kind of thing happening, but as it stands, Reddit wants to be the same kind of social media as Facebook or Instagram.
I also disagree with the implication that the crowd that populated reddit throughout the late 00s and 10s were somehow *more intellectual* than things are now. I found that crowd pretty insufferable and frankly pseudo-intellectual. I do not believe that congregations of software engineers and/or tech bros are as intelligent as most laymen would think. They might be perceived that way, but perception isn't always reality. Just my opinion on that.
Comment by DharmaPolice at 08/01/2025 at 10:45 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Hacker News has much more focused moderation and there is much more emphasis on maintaining the site culture/rules. Additionally, the subject matter is much more restricted - there are no equivalent of subreddits. So you don't have an NFL or UFC subforum there. The subreddit model explicitly invites different people to join and make their own communities.
While Reddit was more of a place for programmers it's been associated with cat pictures for a long time now and "pictures of animals" has got to be one of the lowest forms of internet content (probably on par with celebrity gossip).
Comment by viperised at 08/01/2025 at 16:11 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
'Geeks, MOPs, and Sociopaths' is the definitive analysis, and what I use to justify being a gatekeeper for all of my niche interests: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths[1][2]
1: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
2: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
Comment by xpdx at 08/01/2025 at 18:22 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
People who like to talk will talk to anyone anywhere including on the internet. They aren't there for discussion but to broadcast themselves, so it matters very little what the discussion is.
I just learned the phrase Eternal September- which is strange because I was running a small dial up ISP in the early 1990s that offered Usenet feeds- and while I'm familiar with the phenomenon I've never heard the phrase before.
Usenet is still there and it's returned to it's nerdy roots (and least the non-binaries part). It's too obscure and weird and hard to understand for most casual internet users who need everything to be an app or a website and it has to be pretty and curated and SAFE for their delicate sensibilities- and when it comes down to it they can't understand how nobody OWNS it.
Comment by Kaneshadow at 08/01/2025 at 23:19 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
It's just more normies.
It's like a core law of physics that anything exceedingly cool will eventually attract too many mainstreamers to remain cool.