Tell the best experience or interaction you had on Reddit, and the worst one.

The best for me would be when r/egg_irl helped me realize I was in fact, not cis. Or when r/aspiememes helped me comprehend that my psychologist at the time was wrong. The worst one would be every single time I had to deal with powertriping mods or when I had to fight the rampant transphobia in the platform.

  • Mithre@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I can’t say there was a worst interaction, but there’s two candidates for best. The first is that when he was just starting out, shittywatercolour painted one of my photographs.
    The second is not just a reddit thing, but about 7 years ago I wrote a tutorial for r/fanfiction on how to use calibre to save stories from various websites. It was well received at the time, but since them ive had multiple times where people said it was useful, including one a couple weeks ago on a completely different website.

  • JWBananas@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I publicly called out a user whose photo was on the front page of a local publication for racking up over $10,000 in unpaid red light tickets (at about $75 per offense).

    He threatened to sue me in response. The cognitive dissonance 😂

  • Saitama@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Don’t really know what the “best” experience was. I can’t say there was anything life changing for me. It was nice to have access to so much stuff in a very well designed app (Apollo) that let me share that content super easily with friends and family via Whatsapp or Telegram.

    Worst interactions? There were many…the groupthink can be real bad. There are a lot of people who take karma very seriously. There was one sub, dedicated to a podcast, and it was clear there was a person that had six or seven alts because of the language they used and the debate style, and they would get so upset and downvote any disagreeing comment. Other subs had plenty of trolling, transphobia, shitty moderators, etc. Other subs became basically unusable because of how large they got and how many people posted “hey, look at me!” low effort content. You know, “art I did of X character” with 2,600 upvotes for what was a 10th grader type drawing done on a notebook. That kind of kills the visibility of posts with the potential for deeper or more meaningful conversation that don’t get as many upvotes.

    In the end I think the main issue with Reddit is that it got too big. It attracted too many people on a superficial level, too many trolls, and most subs worth visiting at this point are dedicated to niche subjects and have smallish communities.

  • melonpunk@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Dunno about best, but I had a few instances where I posted a thread only for it to be deleted by a mod and then reposted by them. Gotta farma that karma. I maybe could have disputed it, but getting into a tussle over someones love for numbers that go up feels a bit pathetic.

    • peef ಠ_ಠ
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      1 year ago

      Best thing about Lemmy is that there’s no concept of Karma!

      • dill@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        An equivalent of “Karma” can be pretty easily calculated from a users post and comment history though

  • CROSSS@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    My best experience was help with learning python. The community was great then and a lot of helpful people.

    My worst experience was opening up about my sexual abuse that happened to me from the ages of 4 to 14 by my grandfather and brother who is 9 years older than me. Because of the subs rules I had to leave a lot of stuff out. People didn’t believe me and started attacking me and calling me a lair when I was just looking for some support after cutting my family off. I had another post but it was on a FB group called tell someone. There I could post all the details. I had to dm all the people attacking me and calling me a liar that FB post. They felt horrible afterwards which wasn’t my attention, but thet saw the truth then. It was really discouraging at a time when I didn’t have a lot of support from family or friends.

    • Saitama@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Yeah it’s insane how many people immediately jump to call you a liar when you post things like that. I guess the environment’s been poisoned by all the people making up stuff for karma. The karma concept sounds great in theory but becomes toxic quickly.

  • Nepenthe@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Best experience: A bunch of strangers getting bored during lockdown and setting up an impromptu hemotology class to amuse each other. This eventually became more of a generalized whatever-today’s-instructor-likes class after one user stole the entire show with their brilliant rant about chemistry.

    He and I were pretty good friends for a while and though parting ways was inevitable, I’m still sad to have had to. We can’t get along, but I do miss him and I wish him well.

    Worst experience: every time I posted anything about my mental situation ever. Without fail, İ would come away with multiple of the shallow, dismissive “oHH, if everywhere smells like shit, check your shoes!!” reply. They’ve never taken the time to think it out, but they know it’s snarky enough to win upvotes and shut down the conversation.

    I’m forced to assume the people parroting this are themselves abusers irl, because that’s sure as shit not a sentiment r/raisedbynarcissists would take well to. Or really any PTSD-centered community/professional. Trying to convince the victim it’s their fault is a common tactic, it’s what the R in DARVO stands for.

    If I needed someone to tell me I deserved to get beat with a table leg, I’d still be talking to my mom.

    • vis4valentineOP
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, talking about those issues outside of a support specific community is hell. I absolutely hate a common thing that happens in r/insaneparents when a parent is clearly being beyond abusive and some people in the comments DEFENDS the abusive parent. Like, isn’t the purpose of the sub to mock and call out abusive parents?

      You can smell from a distance the redditors who clearly lack empathy, had perfect lives so they can’t believe someone would have such traumatic experiences, or might be abusive IRL.

  • slybird@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Interaction with r/conservatives. I made a comment that I downvote memes that dumb down complex ideas. I was banned for it.

    • dave_r@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      Tl;Dr: Banned from Ask a Trump Supporter for apologizing.

      Once, I was young and care free - an Innocent. I thought: If only they could see the data they would believe! And, I was uniquely prepared to help them see and understand (I was working on Data viz at the time). And so I started posting in Ask a Trump Supporter. And we got into it. And, well, the dude had a point.

      When you’re wrong your wrong, so I apologized. And, I included a question mark in the apology.

      Bam banned just like that for violating rule xyz about asking questions in the comments.

      Never been so happy to be banned. Probably saved my marriage.

  • allen4362
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    1 year ago

    I wasn’t on Reddit for long, but guys from r/avoidchineseproducts helped me a lot. I offered them to move to Lemmy, but my message wasn’t published. Also, there was another sub (I don’t remember which exactly), where I couldn’t write any message! (I didn’t spam or else.)

  • kersploosh@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I once had a post blow up and spend two days featured on r/all. It was great to see so many people reacting positively to something I wrote!

    I also love the old Reddit switcharoo. Having a big, silly inside joke really made the site feel welcoming.

    The worst is that moment when I realize I’ve been mindlessly scrolling down my front page for who knows how long, just pissing my life away doing nothing of value.

    • blivet@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I also love the old Reddit switcharoo.

      Same. Just for the heck of it I followed the chain all the way back to its origin once. Now that you mention it, I haven’t seen a reference to it in quite some time.

  • ErraticDragon@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    My best Reddit experiences were where Reddit facilitated meeting people “IRL”. I found my first D&D group on Reddit, made 3 great penpal friends, scored a couple dates, …, and one romantic relationship.

    I really don’t know my worst… A couple times I let people get under my skin, but I eventually got good at blocking people.

  • Lvxferre
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    1 year ago

    My best experience was hanging around in r/conlangs Small Discussions, helping out the newbies and being helped by more experienced users. I genuinely cared about that place, and I felt that the mods were actually trying to create a good community, not to enlarge their e-peens.

    My worst is probably when disagreeing with a certain mod, who decided to distort what I said into the complete opposite, just to ban me. (I was being surprisingly polite so he couldn’t ban me out of rudeness.)

  • TechyDad@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    My worst experience came just before the API disaster started. Someone posted on the ELI5 subreddit asking what autistic people experience when they are nonverbal. Now, I’m autistic and, while I’m verbal most of the time, I do have moments where I can’t speak even though I want to. Typically in moments of high emotion or stress. (It feels like the words are in my brain, but the highway to my mouth has a twenty car pileup blocking all traffic.)

    My comment was upvoted many times and many people replied positively to my comment. Then, suddenly, my comment was deleted. The mod said that because this was my personal experience, it was too subjective. Meaning, only an “objective” experience from someone who wasn’t autistic would be allowed.

    Needless to say, I was upset and needed to vent. I vented in the Autism subreddit about the situation and got people replying in support of me. Now, I did make a mistake where people started asking to see my original comment and I posted a screenshot. That was on me - especially because I forgot to blank out the original poster’s name. (In my defense, I had nothing against the OP or their question so nothing lept to mind saying “better blank that out.”)

    The whole thread was suddenly deleted from the Autism subreddit for “doxing.” I deleted the person’s username and asked for the thread to be restored. Instead, I was given a 30 day ban. Then, I quickly got notified that I was permanently banned from ELI5 for “sh*t-stirring.” My goal was never “raise an army of autistic people to attack the ELI5 mods,” but just “blow off steam for something I felt wasn’t just.”

    I decided not to contest either and just stop going to either sub. In fact, I was deciding to reevaluate my Reddit use altogether. And then the API debacle started.

    • detectivemittens@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      That’s ridiculous. The OP posted publicly on Reddit with that username. How is it doxing when they put it out there voluntarily?

    • BobQuasit@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      And that’s why I hate Reddit. It’s too full of people who are just panting at the bit to be judgmental and abuse their power.

  • jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I don’t have a specific worst. The best was when I was complaining about my [then] wife for the umpteenth time. I don’t remember which sub it was. Someone responded with, “Are you familiar with Borderline Personality Disorder? If not, you should look it up.”

    I did look it up. It explained everything I had seen up to that point. It is as like someone had written a text book about my wife. I was both relieved and terrified.

    That was the starting point of getting out of that awful abusive relationship and getting my life back on track.

    • vis4valentineOP
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      1 year ago

      I’m glad you got out of that situation. Just a few days ago Cinema Therapy made a video about Anakin Skywalker and they said he shows many characteristics of Borderline Personality Disorder.

      Of course, you can have BPD and not be an absolute abusive asshole but when they are, it’s horrible for the victims.

  • ShadowAether@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Good: I got support from people when things in my DnD group got weird.

    Bad: Once, I asked a technical question that I had asked people irl and researched a lot and not found what I was looking for. On reddit, I had people making assumptions and nitpicking the terminology while avoiding the actual question completely. It was a good example of the CS/math departments friction (which makes a whole lot more sense to me now). I did get a better answer on another site by just posting the equation and using zero jargon but I ended up abandoning that topic bc it was impractical.

  • Aninjanameddaryll@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Worst, up until the current fiasco, was having told a very deeply personal and unique story, but being torn to shreds because I wrote it pretty. That meant it had to be fake.

    It taught me the lesson to never waste effort on reddit.

    But the best was kinda the flip side of it. Similar thing, talking about death and dying, which was a large part of professional life, and despite writing it pretty, it resonated with people and I got some really nice conversations commiserating about the way that can change you.