I sorta like the random meme subs and eventually I always get back to Commie subs. But Jesus its so divisive. Like immediately after I suggest Russia sucks compared to USSR it isn’t imperialist, now I’m getting pulled into a whole argument with someone who believes they are imperialist. I mean I understand their points but everyone on Reddit thinks just because Russia is not socialist, Ukraine and Russia are the same evil and Russia is actually Imperialist, so by this logic I guess this person sees Russia as a greater threat than the Nato expansion that Ukraine aims for. God Reddit is annoying
Yeah, I know mainstream sites slowly tried to turn me very petty and cruel and hateful. And of course I always had a rationale that they deserved it. Not healthy spiritually/mentally/emotionally and IMO bad praxis too, so I eventually stopped too.
I was so damn angry all the time. Heart racing when talking to people IRL who disagreed with me on something trivial as I expected the same sort of shit-flinging argument as I’d get in online. Opening Facebook/Reddit/Instagram became an exercise in self-harm, immediately getting ready to fight with strangers as soon as I could.
Perhaps this is telling on myself rather than indicative of a profound social issue, but it has been shown true that the best way to get you engaged is to get you angry. 9 times outta 10 it’s not worth it to engage at all, and you gotta be pretty sure of when it’s worth it.
Same thing happened to me and I’m a very calm person. IRL relationships improved dramatically after abandoning Reddit, to the same health that they were before ever using it.
Bear in mind, too, that I was always very selective. I avoided the front page and the reactionary politics subs and went straight to ‘Marxist’ subs. Arranging by most liked and searching these for Q&As was helpful. The problem started when I began to engage. Everyone was so hostile-no-true-Scotsman. Not a good place to learn when every question is interpreted as sarcastic rhetoric or as the final ever battle for the salvation of Marxism. Perfect case study for Sakai’s ‘bad politics’ that brook no questioning or critique.
I remember ShitLiberalsSay really driving me off the deep end, and that at least was ostensibly a Marxist sub. But they linked to shitty subreddits and it was a constantly angry circlejerk, three-minute-hate type stuff that may be cathartic for some people but only made me angrier and more misanthropic fr. I glean much more from good faith conversations here between comrades than I ever have from liberal-bashing threads, deserved as they may well be.