• ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.netOP
      11·
      5 months ago

      I remember when they had reddit meetups. I stupidly brought my toddler thinking it was going to be family friendly. The places they hosted were peoples workplaces. One guy rented a limo. Beer was given away for free. Some women walked around shirtless and one creep was taking videos. Feeling unsafe, I left. Then I got a email about how the hosts were looking for the creep because he may have committed a crime, and was asking for money to pay for the broken office equipment.

      Wild time.

    • ThirdWorldOrder@lemm.ee
      8·
      5 months ago

      I’ve been on Reddit for 15 years and haven’t really noticed any shift for the most part. The only thing I find unbearable is the amount of bots and karma whoring reposting that goes on. The culture I feel is the same.

      • morrowind@lemmy.ml
        44·
        5 months ago

        That’s wild. I’ve only been there 5.5 yrs and I’ve noticed dramatic shifts in the culture as it’s become popular and profit focused

        • Zorque@lemmy.worldEnglish
          15·
          5 months ago

          Same, I was on it for more than a decade. There’s definitely been dramatic shifts. Dunno what small community that other poster stuck to to not see any changes over a decade and a half, but it must have been fun for them.

        • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
          5·
          5 months ago

          I used to on for about 10 and noticed a dramatic shift but on the other hand for years I was only looking at gaming subs then started looking at the more common ones. So that could possibly be part of it but it still seemed to get worse over time to me.

          • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyz
            5·
            5 months ago

            I unsubscribed to all the gaming subs around gamergate, holy shit everything went downhill so quickly and never really recovered. We’re seeing the effects of it to this day.

            I refused to participate in gaming communities online for a long time after that, only looked at my RSS feeds for news/official announcements. The migration to Lemmy last year has me participating in them a bit more again, as long as I don’t tell anyone I’m playing a Nintendo game, lol.

              • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyz
                4·
                5 months ago

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_(harassment_campaign)

                Literally the event that accelerated the bullshit “Woke Video Games” pushback we see mouth breathers spewing in gaming spaces today. I believe this is what spawned r/KotakuInAction and the whole “It’s About Ethics™️ in Gaming Journalism” as well, but someone correct me if I’m wrong.

                These exact talking points and methods were then taken up by the alt-right to propel the culture war into the mainstream, and welcome to 2024.

      • Transporter Room 3@startrek.website
        22·
        5 months ago

        14 and change, it definitely had multiple, noticeable shifts.

        And if you didn’t notice, you probably only stuck to a handful of communities, because they changed how the front page works several times, and what communities are default. All of those changed the feel by a lot.

        Each change may not have affected each sub equally hard, default subs turned to shit, subs that got turned off of default finally got the reality check they needed, and when they started banning entire subs, there were noticeably less shitty people from time to time as they pruned.

        Again, if you stuck to smaller subs, or even mid sized ones but didn’t interact a ton, or just didn’t log on every day, I could see how you may not have noticed.

        They definitely ramped up moderation, and the administration got a lot more heavy-handed over the last few years, clearly (in hindsight) in preparation for the big change last year.

        • ThirdWorldOrder@lemm.ee
          6·
          5 months ago

          I was never part of any of those controversial subs like fat people hate or watch people die.

          I never went to /all/ either.

          Just stuck to regular subs like news, fitness, some niche hobbies etc. If anything, the niche hobby subs got better since there was more people. Fitness did get overly moderated but I just moved to fitness over 30 sub instead and it was fine.

          Some of the bigger subs became shit shows, but they were kind of like since their inception.

          Firing Victoria was annoying since I think she did good AMA. Getting rid of third party apps is the biggest shittiest thing that I experienced which is why I came to Lemmy in the first place.

      • A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world
        3·
        5 months ago

        Idk man, there were real communities where folks knew each other back then. There’s very little of that anymore because moderating those subs is a thankless full time job and the rest got massive. /r/CripplingAlcoholism is a good example - back around 2010 it was a close-knit group of drunks, by 2018 or so it was just a swamp.

        /r/CenturyClub and the related subs were some of the best places on the internet back ~15 years ago. I deleted my old account that was in it ages ago and haven’t bothered rejoining since I passed the threshold, but even what, 8 years ago when I did that it was already way different.

        Game subreddits went way downhill, too.

        The overall quality of the site is much worse than it used to be.

        • Transporter Room 3@startrek.website
          7·
          5 months ago

          I remember when I could post to the firefly sub and banter with the same 20 or so people every week, then one day something hit the front page and a flood of people came in.

          Everything turned from thought provoking discussions about what little lore we did have and overanalysing every episode, to “this is what the actors do now” and “here’s an image with a quote from the show” maybe an art post of original content here and there.