Toxic

I know I've been harsh towards Reddit lately but, I assure you, they are deserving of my ire. At the beginning of the year when I was feeling sad, alone, and removed from the majority of like-minded peers, I decided to get back onto the internet in full form. I made connections through several different platforms, including Reddit. It quickly became my favorite and most visited. I literally started every day with it.

I have considered myself a human sponge for knowledge for a very long time. I know a little about a lot. I spend the better portion of my days reading articles and gathering information to make informed decisions about what I want to write and what direction I want to go within that topic. Reddit is a great format for a website when you have an interest in several subjects and want to discover new information and news. It is the reigning King of aggregate information websites.

As quickly as Reddit earned my respect as a place to feed my perpetually hungry mind, it ran afoul of my taste buds. The story of why I was banned from two popular subreddits has already been discussed earlier in this blog.

What Reddit has done towards me is so easily fixed but, they chose not to take that path for whatever reason. Again, I felt I had to question what I did wrong and try to make amends in any way possible. The problem is, I legitimately can not do that.

After I was banned, I was in talks between Moderators and Administrators to figure out what I had done wrong. As I was asking for Moderators to have an open discussion about my ban, I was in turn served with a 3-day suspension from the entire site by the Administrators. I was informed that asking Moderators for an open discussion about my ban, was considered harassment.

This is the day when everything with Reddit changed for me. Being banned by Moderators for something that I didn't understand, fine. Keeping the Moderators' ban without a real appeal process, also fine. The Administrators taking sides with the Moderators without question and deeming an inquiry for an open discussion as harassment, now we have a problem.

The most absurd part about this entire situation is that, during this time, Reddit Administrators implemented new healthy community guidelines that clearly state that taking these kinds of actions are a direct violation.

I still have my Reddit profile but, I do not visit the site nearly as often as I used to. I find Reddit becoming overly toxic and not worthy of daily visits, like so many other parts of the internet. No longer is the joy once had on the internet. Many people have already discussed this issue, even to the point where it is now satire or in jest.