this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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Okay, hear me out:
I get the argument that most of these protests are meaningless/if you REALLY want to change you're going to have to do this this this. whatever (I usually stop reading there). I understand, but I don't agree.
Sure, it's nice when a protest can actually enact real changes but lets face it; that's not common and sometimes not going to happen: fine. The decision to make a protest shouldn't be decided on the basis of 'can I win'; a much less restrictive--and very deeply fun--philosophy should be "is this worth taking time out of my day just to annoy/frustrate/irritate those who are doing this?' If yes (it should always be yes), "So lets find out how many ways me and anyone else I can recruit can make this happen'.
In other words: every time a subreddit finds a new and interesting and stupid and ridiculous and just weird way to be irritating and embarrassing af...I am living for this.
Very refreshing take on it. The cynicism about whether the protests were 'worth it' because we didn't see massive results felt like it missed all the fun of giving the greedy corporation the collective finger.
If the only reason you'll fight is because you think you can win, you're doing it for the wrong reasons. Win or lose or both or nothing at all, you do it because it's worth fighting for. Sometimes this ends with Brown v. Board of Education and Obergefell v. Hodges, but mostly, it won't, so if the best I can do right now is give some people a very, very bad day, well, I'm in: let's go.
Right. I fight not because I believe I'll win, or even because I believe victory is "possible", but because it's more comfortable for me so to speak to be fighting than to quietly and passively support the ideology I disagree with. It is more "restful" to me to be fighting a fight I believe in than to be resting in a world I hate.
You. You are my people.
The problem is that the finger is still a form of engagement when you do it on the site you're protesting. The admins don't care as long as you're still driving clicks.
Legit and I agree.
However, nothing in my experience with Reddit Admins has contradicted my impression that when they were five years old, you could give them a full screaming meltdown playing "I'm not touching you" in three minutes or less. Can I prove it if they aren't melting down regularly over some of this where I can see it? No. But I know it's happening, and that's enough.
Honest question, is there such a thing as bad engagement? Or is engagement like that saying about bad publicity?
NSFW content can’t be monetised and advertisers are having second thoughts about their willingness to advertise there (or so the lowering number of clicks on the advertisement page leads one to believe), so I guess there can be bad engagement.
I can handle a fun protest.
The protests remind me of the last night at bar on land that just got bought by developers and will soon be torn down. The battle is lost, you can do nothing and leave or you can get weird and write your farewells on the walls, steal the toilet seats, and otherwise vandalize the place on your way out and have one last laugh with your friends before you head your separate ways.
Ha, I have a brick from Boston Garden.
This is just the latest in a cycle of wash-rinse-repeat reddit protests over the last 13 years.
I joined the year it opened up and had the same account until '10. I came back about '13 or '14 but came and went several times after that, I had no attachment to the new accounts I made by this point. The difference was those times I always deleted posts and comments after 24 hours regardless, disabled replies, stopped responding to those that got through, blocked any user that tried to message me, used old. and several filters/ad blockers. This latest episode crossed my tedium threshold and I deactivated my account when the latest round of WRR protests were announced. I won’t be back this time. I was also an early user on Digg and left in '10 and quite frankly I had forgotten Digg was a thing until I saw it mentioned in the latest reddit drama coverage. I’m pretty sure I’ll get reminded reddit still exists periodically when the next and following user-unfriendly policy protests make the news again.
Been on Reddit a long time and feel this one is different. Not because it's worse, or makes more people more upset, but because all those other times moderators still slightly trusted admins to not completely sabotage their own site. This time all goodwill has been definitively trashed. Above-and-beyond type extraordinary efforts to maintain communities like with IAmA and AskHistorians look to be going away forever, so are people maintaining tools to have a chance at handling spam etc.
Nobody wants to work for Reddit for free anymore.