Hope one doesn't get stuck in the washing machine....
Welcome to 2026. Apperently we faught wars for this....
742 Evergreen Terrace. Springfield.
Why can't I see the first picture? This is how it looks on my end...
No no. I can imagine users AREN'T signing up as quickly as before.
There are a finite number of humans on this planet with internet. Of those with the internet, you have to look at the breakdown of people who know about reddit, and those who do not.
You may be thinking "Everyone knows about reddit.", to which I would say "Wow. What a stupid person you are. So sure of yourself that everybody knows all the same things you know. Just because something is common knowledge, you think that everybody knows about it."
And it turns out, that's just not the case. Consider the fact that when you break people down by age catagory, the overwhelming majority of humans on this planet right now are boomers. I don't mean this faux definition of boomers that some of you use. I'm not saying a 36 year old who doesn't know how to open a can of beans. He's not a boomer, specifically because he's 36. He would be a millennial. No, I'm using the ACTUAL definition of boomer here. Those born between 1945 and 1965. Those are a generation known as the baby boomers. Ironically enough, even though I'm not using the faux definition of "person who doesn't know common knowledge", it IS that same stereotype that comes into play here.
There are millions of boomers still alive. They are the dominant generation by sheer numbers. When I asked my 80 year old aunt what she looks at on reddit, she had no idea what reddit was. I had to explain the concept. Then I had to explain what a content aggregator was. Then I had to explain what content was.
Mind you, she knows exactly what facebook is. She knows what facetime is. No clue what reddit is, and when I explained it to her she said "I just don't see how anyone would want to use a website like that. Why do I care what stories other strangers post? I only type comments on facebook because they're being read by my friends and family. I don't care if someone 5 states over doesn't like my comment I left for your cousin Bret on how to make better gravy." Then she spent 10 minutes complaining that mashed potatoes and gravy isn't that hard to make, and Bret is being lazy every thanksgiving.
These are the people that dominate the internet. A website like reddit needs new eyeballs on their platform. Here's the problem. There's only so many humans on earth, who have access to free internet. I don't mean free as in non-paid. I mean free as in not censored. Many countries censor their internet. Even the united states has to some degree begun censoring in some states.
So when reddit looks for new groups to target, they want people who have lots of free time, and who are going to engage every post. The boomers are the perfect target for that. They have nothing but free time right now. They're opinionated enough to be confident in their wrong opinions. They're argumentative. These are all desired qualities to reddit. Reddit doesn't care if you're posting racist or divisive opinions. They prefer that, because it creates engagement. But boomers have no clue what reddit is, and when explained to them, they seem to dislike the core concept.
Reddit targeted young people since it's inception. It targeted the nerdy. It targeted a small sample of everybody, but in the begining it was mostly social outcasts. I remember in 2010 being on reddit, and feeling that the people on reddit were mostly people who were smarter than most people you'd interact with in real life. I remember using reddit to ask for advice because I felt like I was asking a smart audience. Then by 2016, I remember thinking at some point idiots took over.
So young people aren't signing up, because they know what reddit is, and the ones who want to be there already are. They aren't attracting middle aged people, because most of them know exactly what reddit is, and if they wanted to be there, they would be there. Gen X is where the divide starts. Some Gen X know exactly what reddit is, and if they wanted to be on it, they would be. Other Gen X have no idea what reddit is.
And then boomers just have no clue.
The end result is, I imagine not many people are signing up for reddit at this point simply because they've reached max capacity. Sure, their servers might be able to handle more humans, but my point is, more humans don't exist. All the ones who know of your service, are either already signed up, or don't want to be.
They have two options. They can either target the boomers HARD, and make reddit the new facebook. OR they can wait like 15 years, and target the NEW young people which right now are still watching Sesame Street, and not really contributing to political discussions currently.
The downside of targeting boomers is, it's not really a long term strategy. I just watched a documentary on youtube where an american soldier from the vietnam war who gave his perspective on what he saw in the war. The video was filmed in 2014. It ended by saying "Three months after filming this documentary, (name) died peacefully in his sleep." That was 12 years ago, and he died of old age.
The downside of targeting new people is, there is no big event where there will be massive new drops of new generation population. They trickle in as days go by. Also, young people aren't having kids as much. So even when they do trickle in, there's not a lot of them.
The thing to remember about the boomers is simple. Their generation was NOT natural. The greatest generation really lived up to their name in terms of being the greatest to repopulate the country. My grandpa had 4 kids, and for the time period, that was considered a small size family. There were other families that had 12 kids. And while the baby boom officially lasted 20 years, the bulk of it was between 1945-1950. It was basically young adults getting done with their tour, and coming home like "Where's my girlfriend, I haven't had sex in FOREVER!!!" And it must have been really good sex too, because they just went at it like rabbits.
So now the question becomes "Do they go after the immediate short term profits which have a guarenteed end date quickly approaching, or do they do the hard work for slow but sustainable long term returns?
C'mon. It's 2026. It should be obvious that businesses today only thing about short term. That's why everything is in the shape it's in. Companies make quarterly decisions for big payday over the choices that would ensure the company stays afloat for 50 years.
Well it's too bad that Harold Ramis is dead. I'm sure if he were alive, we'd have a new Ghostbusters movie where this cat is possessed by some powerful ghost from 1000 years ago.
Which I never understood. Why are the ghosts always from hundreds of years ago? All their unfinished business would be finished without them. All the people they want to haunt are long dead.
They should be like "This is the ghost of Tom! He died last week trying a stunt in real life that he watched on youtube which warned him not to try himself!" You know those cords that they call suicide cords? The ones that are 3 prong electric outlet prongs on one end, and also 3 prong outlets on the other end? They say not to plug both ends in to the same outlet. So that's what he does, and then he dies.
THAT should be the ghost who possesses this cat. But because it's a cat, he still does cat stuff. Like pushing 6 foot gargoyle statues off of the ledges of skyscrapper buildings.
I vote for this guy for president.
I actually got an award as being in the top 1% of reddit karma earners for 2022.
In 2023 they banned me because I didn't buy stock when it was being introduced.
You'd think they'd want me there. Creating content. For free. I'm sure they thought I'd just create a new account. Nope. I just came here.
Weird thing is, I've had two main running jokes for years. One is being obsessed with corn. The other is calling George Clooney a smug bastard.
I had that for a while. Then yesterday I got a lockout message.
I thought he was going to look, and the bee was going to be having sex with the flower.
I remember on reddit I said something to the effect of "if I were a parent I would not let my kids go in the ballpit. It's covered in urine, and hasn't been cleaned in decades."
Some idiot said that they do put the balls in a washing machine every night.
No they don't! They would need dozens and dozens of industrial sized washing machines to clean all the balls in one night.
And also, how do they dry? Can't just put them in a drier. They'll melt.
Hand drying would take a whole crew months.
I remember when I first got here, there's ALWAYS the innitial shock of "what IS this place???"
Once I figured out what this place was, I asked what I thought was an obvious queation.
"If people can interact with the same communities from different instances, wouldn't it be easy to just make a new account on a new instance? The name might be the same, but the instance is different, so it's a different account. And since anyone can host an instance, what's not to prevent someone from hosting hundreds or thousands of instances with the explicit intent on being malicious?"
When I asked that two years ago, I was told by several members that would never be an issue, since instance owners can defederate with instances.
Which I don't think solves the problem. It seems to me in a cat and mouse game here it's not the admins who hold the advantage. Seems like the troublemakers hold the advantage.
Because everything the admins have is reactionary. They can only ban after the troublemakers cause trouble. But then they're back in 10 seconds.
The admins aren't paid. The mods aren't paid. It seems to me if troublemakers wanted to shut everything down they would do it with a coordinated attack. Having thoussnds if not millions of bots all at once overrun the human mods.
Eventually the mods and admins would have no choice but to shut down. Too little resources to keep up with the work of running a popular instance.
And thats kind of what happened with lemm.ee. Not trolls per se, but a lack of resources. They ran out of money and resources to host an instance, and that's without the traffic of overwhelming trolls.
Yet when I said this, I was told I was wrong. Yet here we are. Now you have 1 troll who manually makes account and is banned. Makes account, gets banned. Makes account, banned again.
Thats ONE troll, who honestly seems like he's doing it for his own amusement rather than malicious intent.
What happens when there's a much larger concentrated troll attack?
One of the nice things about the modlog is that anyone can quickly verify whether bans or comment removals are justified according to their own perspective.
Not really. Most of the time it's like "So-n-so got banned Reason: "
So you click the context to see whats happened, and the thread is deleted. So you can't even see what was said. You only see the topic title.
Or if the whole thread isn't deleted, you just see "Comment deleted by mod".
…I thought Reddit refugees would be sick of this, and more careful/skeptical, but apparently not.
"I thought the behavior that they engaged in on the other site wouldn't happen here on the new site!"
shocked pikachu face
…wait, do you think googly-eyes is a google product?
I like how "googly-eyed" is in quotes, but "Chud" is not. Implying the googly-eyed part was a direct quote, but the Chud part is just newrepublic.com tacking on.
This cat is judging me for all my poor choices......
AN OTTER???? HERE???? AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
pets the cute mod
This should be on one of those motivational posters that every office seems to have. The kind with those stock free images of people giving thumbs up.