It did happen before the IPO. It's been happening for several years. They have not been doing mass bans all at once. They've been surreptitiously taking down subreddits over the years. Mostly smaller ones that woujldn't draw much attetnion. Looks like they went for the bigger targets now.
This isn't a sudden change to ideologically align with the current US administration either. They have been at this for a long time.
Yep. People see the media they want to see. Nobody was paying attention to the stories about how this exact thing would happen. And what do you know it's happening.
Even then let's say the media sucks and we were completely not told by anyone. All you had to do was remember 4 years ago... But that's also too much to ask these days.
It's schrodingers social media platform. Simultaneously had an impact on the zeitgeist and none at all. Objectively speaking it did. The thing about reddit is it's the one that everybody uses but nobody talks about using. So people have developed this strange cognitive dissonance. Where reddit seems to exist but also did not... because it's required that reddit was peoples secret hideout so it can't have been too popular because that would ruin its historical cachet.
And now the phenomenon has morphed into some other strange beast. Where reddit is right now undeniably a popular platform so that dichotomy can't hold up anymore. Now people refer to reddit in the third person while being redditors themselves. Lately it's very obvious seeing on reddit the users referring to "reddit" as if they aren't themselves a part of it. This post is a very example of the phenomenon. Conservatives screeching about a fictionalized "reddit" in their head that is some kind of far left caricature. A thing that never existed. This kind of thing cuts across all kinds of intersections. People using "reddit" as a label for whatever the other side of the argument they have in their head with zero self awareness that they are "reddit" themselves.
The reality is that reddit is a sibling platform to 4chan. You cannot separate /pol/ from 4chan any more than you can separate the far right parts from reddit. To say reddit is left wing is as delusional to say 4chan is left wing. One can point to the lgbt board on 4chan and say, "look it's the lefties". Some how that is more digestible than selectively picking some lgbt subreddits as proof that reddit is left echo chamber.
The venn diagram of reddit, 4chan, and any given social media platform is a lot closer than people want to admit. Because apparently reddit is a secret that everyone has but nobody wants to cop to. And it's also everyone's favorite strawman. Except when it comes time to talk about the impact its had on the world. Then poof it doesn't exist at all.
Dear Penthouse Forum reddit, I'm a 20 year-old college student and I never thought I'd be writing to the Penthouse Forum reddit, but...
It's the lowest common denominator of smut entertainment. The tech companies have managed to veil it all in prestige. It should be called gossip media or something.
Instead people think there's some kind of real human connection. Some kind of deep discussions happening.
Yeah obviously we've completely lost the plot a long time ago. Nobody even remembers when tech was bands of ragtag nerds making something out of nothing. Now they are the rich whose only purpose to is extract more wealth. Tech what? Who even knows anymore.
That includes the average tech workers. If that angers you then you're lost too.
Nobody has noticed that there's more bragging about compensation than accomplishments. It used to be the other way around. Nerds eagerly showing off to anyone who will listen about whatever thing they cooked up. It's been this way for the past long time long before this LLM AI era.
Well bluetooth doesn't carry enough bitrate to accomplish this. Besides. Apple won't and doesn't need to because their AAC encoder is superior. There is no other bluetooth codec that comes even close. Every codec that claims to be the best one yet is more marketing than anything.
Vendors reframed the narrative for SBC to be dog shit so they can push their own as cutting edge new tech. In reality SBC isn't that bad. The vendor codecs aren't that good. And Apple has some kind of secret sauce in their AAC encoder that results in really good quality reproduction of audio.
As far as I've seen most of the gimmicky codecs are spins of existing old technology. AAC itself is old too but at least one vendor Apple has focused on making their implementation good. We don't need another standard+1. We just need a common standard done well. If only Apple would open theirs.
Nothing happened. The generational war another facet of culture war. It doesn't make sense because you have to ask what the fuck happened to Gen X? Why don't they fit into the picture? Why doesn't the data add up? That should tell you something. Your experiment is flawed. The culture war doesn't make sense.
Yeah it worked for the first part of internet history. You talked to people from all over the world.
Now people use the internet like a carnival freak show exhibition. They don't talk to others. They scroll to gawk at what oddities and tap the glass and jeer at the inhuman thing. Social media is designed this way.
Yeah the "told you so" stuff falls on deaf ears. Trump is an internet troll. His supporters have come to embody that. They are content rolling in their own shit. Anyone is welcome to join.
There's no reasoning or out trolling trolls. No going low or going high. You're supposed to ignore trolls. Ultimately they are the lone fool rolling in their own shit. The time to do this was in the 2016 campaign. Should have ignored him and elected an establishment Republican. Donald would be shilling steaks or whatever right now.
It's abundant on the moon. It can be mined. There's another space race going on. We don't hear about it because the west isn't winning. And we're in the middle of another cold war where propaganda must control the narrative.
Meh... Less than 3 million vote swing and everyone is clamoring to explain how this is the most successful precise strategic political victory in history for Democrats. Instead everyone has their own opinion about why it's the greatest meandering boondoggle ever.
I think the gist of the article is correct. And it could be written a lot shorter. Basically Democrats have ignored men. It's been about 10 years and they still don't get it. Men are people too. We vote.
Yeah we suck. We're shitlord ra[p|c]ists. So forget about men, right? We're persona non grata. Pretty much the Democrat strategy of this generation. Both parties have siloed into their own base. Unfortunately for Democrats they don't have the disaffected male vote which is costing them greatly.
This wasn't so much a political loss for the Democrats. It was a cultural one. Politically the people want liberal policy. As evidenced by the fact that without the lens of partisanship, people tend to prefer what liberals offer. e.g. Obamacare without the stink of "Obamacare" is just healthcare that even republicans support and rely on.
Republicans are winning the culture war which is translating to sweeping political victories. As much as the claim to be taking devastating hits in the face of some made up Democrat goliath of oppression. Reality has proven to be the opposite. Democrats are not in tune with the people. Having entertainment and the music industry has only gotten them 1 for 3 in as many elections.
The article is wrong about Democrats having mainstream media on their side. MSM supports Trump. It was clear in 2016 for those of us keeping score. Trump was the medias favorite to win back then too. They loved the ratings. Now? I think some of them have simply gone mask off. "Sanewashing" as people are calling it. The media won't cover things as they are. They stretch the overton window to normalize the far right while the left gets no such reciprocation.
The article is also wrong about gamers being historically progressive. This is a fictional archetype of innocent nice-guy nerds. This is basically an entirely made up Hollywood movie trope. Gamers have always been reactionary. The difference is that gamers we're not political.
And I think "gamer" should be expanded to internet culture. The historically predominantly male online nerd cultures but we'll keep calling them "gamers" here.
Republicans identified this back in 2016. Democrats are still clueless about it in 2025. Just a bunch of edgelord gamer kids who don't vote anyways. Those kids are now adults. In fact many of those gamers were adults back then too. Yeah they're pathetic old man-children playing video games all day but they vote none the less. At least they can be persuaded to which is what Republicans have been doing. So by now Democrats have lost generations of voting age men. They will continue to fight this ever steeper uphill battle.
Nobody on the left has an answer for how to actually reach these voters. It's made even more difficult when people won't even acknowledge the fact that these men we're not ever progressive to begin with. Gamers have always been racist and sexist. The difference that people can't attune to is that they were not political so they assume these nerds must be progressive by default. Because shouting n-bombs is fine when you follow up with "it's just a joke bro". To be frank people seem to have fallen for one of the oldest tricks when someone says "I'm no racist but ... It's just the facts bro. You can't argue with facts." That's a classic gamer-isms / internet-isms.
Gamers did not pivot into reactionary. They were activated politically. It's an old meme that you would not be anyone's "personal army". In other words you'd remain apolitical. Not to be mistaken for not having political opinions but that you wouldn't be actively engaged in politics. Republicans blew up floodgates holding that back. Another meme was to "hide your power level". In other words don't reveal you're far right opinions. Another thing that was done away with. But really it was a symbolic gesture since nobody really hid their bigotry online. Especially not gamers.
Democrats should have prioritized trying strategize this problem. They've had 10 years of ignoring it. They've dug their own grave at this point. If they still don't know these basic things about internet culture then they're doomed to keep losing in the foreseeable future.
It did happen before the IPO. It's been happening for several years. They have not been doing mass bans all at once. They've been surreptitiously taking down subreddits over the years. Mostly smaller ones that woujldn't draw much attetnion. Looks like they went for the bigger targets now.
This isn't a sudden change to ideologically align with the current US administration either. They have been at this for a long time.