It feels to me like on most subreddits I've visited that aren't designed to be liberal, the mentality is basically "Free speech forever go fuck yourself" in so far as acting like a douche. If you post anything suggesting a person shouldn't say something terrible, people just say you're being whiny and downvote you. At least, that's my experience.
Hey, I'm still a free speech absolutist. I very strongly agree that
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Well, maybe have to make some exceptions for the "free exercise thereof" part of the religion thing. You know, if your religion is murder or cannibalism or whatever. But the rest is 100% Scott agrees.
Wait, I also don't completely agree with the congress part. That only applies to the US federal government, and therefore also US state and local governments. It should apply to all governments everywhere in the universe.
Two minor edits, and it is perfect.
But hey, that's just government. If someone that isn't a government makes a rule that governs a space, say a place of employment, a private residence, or a web site they pay for, they can limit free speech however the fuck they want. Deal with it.
Ah yes, I recognize that character design. Vivian James, the mascot for gamergate. Oh but this version has a figure 8 in her hair, so it's from 8chan AKA people who were so shitty that they get kicked out of fucking 4chan.
I can only imagine how they came to that design. Wait I don't have to, it's all documented or easily inferred. They chose a woman as the mascot to a movement with anti-feminist views in order to give credence to horrible ideas. Also the sweater colour has green and purple stripes for their "gif of Piccolo and Vegeta fucking" inside joke. What I'm saying is fuck that character and everything it stands for.
The saddest part is that whoever drew that could be a really good illustrator if they really worked on it for some years. Instead, they'll just be a waste of space.
The saddest part is that whoever drew that could be a really good illustrator if they really worked on it for some years. Instead, they'll just be a waste of space.
I was thinking the same thing. Erase all the bullshit text from that comic and add in some witty observations and you'd have an ok comic. For instance, point out that 3 big FPS coming out (Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Titanfall) really close to one another, and how everyone's fighting over which is going to be the big one. The last panel is, "Well, im off to play Overwatch with everyone else". You'd have a perfectly serviceable comic. Hey, my joke is nothing amazing, but leagues better than what it was actually wasted on; hateful, spiteful, drek. It's a total waste of potential talent.
The saddest part is that whoever drew that could be a really good illustrator if they really worked on it for some years. Instead, they'll just be a waste of space.
I was thinking the same thing. Erase all the bullshit text from that comic and add in some witty observations and you'd have an ok comic. For instance, point out that 3 big FPS coming out (Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Titanfall) really close to one another, and how everyone's fighting over which is going to be the big one. The last panel is, "Well, im off to play Overwatch with everyone else". You'd have a perfectly serviceable comic. Hey, my joke is nothing amazing, but leagues better than what it was actually wasted on; hateful, spiteful, drek. It's a total waste of potential talent.
It's not that great. Look at that fucked up floppy hand in panel 5. Still, the person has potential.
I really don't understand all the hate for reddit I see around here. It is exactly what you want it to be, no more no less. When I was still at RIT it was extremely liberal, so much so it was a bit of a turn off, as it grew in popularity it became more of a mixed bag. But as it changed people with any sense changed too and unsubbed from basically all default subs and made a nice little place to see interesting stuff for themselves.
There's a difference between refusing to see, and refusing to acknowledge.
I'd bet Stormfront doesn't look that bad, if you only look at threads where the Neonazi fucks are just swapping recipes. And before you say "That's an unfair comparison", Reddit not only hosts a larger white supremacist community than Stormfront, but was also called out by Daily Stormer as one of the best places to recruit new white supremacists.
I really don't understand all the hate for reddit I see around here. It is exactly what you want it to be, no more no less. When I was still at RIT it was extremely liberal, so much so it was a bit of a turn off, as it grew in popularity it became more of a mixed bag. But as it changed people with any sense changed too and unsubbed from basically all default subs and made a nice little place to see interesting stuff for themselves.
There's a difference between refusing to see, and refusing to acknowledge.
I'd bet Stormfront doesn't look that bad, if you only look at threads where the Neonazi fucks are just swapping recipes. And before you say "That's an unfair comparison", Reddit not only hosts a larger white supremacist community than Stormfront, but was also called out by Daily Stormer as one of the best places to recruit new white supremacists.
The fact that there are parts of reddit that are terrible only means that there are parts of people that are terrible. It doesn't say anything about reddit at large. The only thing I can say about reddit at large is that it's a place that is whatever you make it into and an algorithm that ensures a constant cycle of the most upvoted things see the most eyeballs.
If you unsub from everything but /r/aww you'll get nothing but a constantly updating/rotating list of the cutest things on the internet. How is that a nazi recruitment tool?
Reddit's highly compartmentalized. A sub-reddit for a specific game can have as much information as a wiki for that game. However, if the mods are shit at their jobs it a sub-reddit can become a howling monkey cage of poop flinging
Reddit's highly compartmentalized. A sub-reddit for a specific game can have as much information as a wiki for that game. However, if the mods are shit at their jobs it a sub-reddit can become a howling monkey cage of poop flinging
Completely true, that's a valid criticism of any moderated forum though.
However, if you were to frame any particular group as insiders to outsiders, the poop-flingers consider themselves inside. They consider the space as a whole to be generally theirs, just as non-poop-flingers feel the need to create safe havens within the space. This is why poop-flingers venture to anti-poop spaces to fling poop. If you interact in a neither poop nor anti-poop subreddit, the default expectation will be poop, and anti-poop will be expected to find resistance.
If you unsub from everything but /r/aww you'll get nothing but a constantly updating/rotating list of the cutest things on the internet. How is that a nazi recruitment tool?
Do I have to repeat myself? There is a difference between refusing to see and refusing to acknowledge. Covering your eyes doesn't make all the bad shit vanish.
Comment on this from an admin who shall remain anonymous as he'd like to remain employed: "yeah, they always say that when reddit's criticized. It's horseshit, there's enormous sub cross-pollination, nobody is subbed to just one. They don't want to admit they're sharing a space they like with fucking assbags."
If you unsub from everything but /r/aww you'll get nothing but a constantly updating/rotating list of the cutest things on the internet. How is that a nazi recruitment tool?
Do I have to repeat myself? There is a difference between refusing to see and refusing to acknowledge. Covering your eyes doesn't make all the bad shit vanish.
Comment on this from an admin who shall remain anonymous as he'd like to remain employed: "yeah, they always say that when reddit's criticized. It's horseshit, there's enormous sub cross-pollination, nobody is subbed to just one. They don't want to admit they're sharing a space they like with fucking assbags."
My full quote acknowledges the bad shit exists there. Here "The fact that there are parts of reddit that are terrible only means that there are parts of people that are terrible."
But as an example lets say Hitler is on reddit. He's subbed to /r/thedonald and /r/painting and some other stuff. He's a nazi shitlord in sub a but can comment on brushstrokes or some shit in sub b. Context matters. If he decides to nazi shitlord it up in sub b he'll hopefully be dealt with. If not the general consensus will be that's not a good place to discuss painting anymore and it will either be cleaned up or move to a spot with better moderation.
/r/xkcd is a good example of a place that was obviously terrible at one time and got cleaned up. I acknowledge that there is evil on reddit but I just don't think that that fact makes reddit inherently evil.
However, if you were to frame any particular group as insiders to outsiders, the poop-flingers consider themselves inside. They consider the space as a whole to be generally theirs, just as non-poop-flingers feel the need to create safe havens within the space. This is why poop-flingers venture to anti-poop spaces to fling poop. If you interact in a neither poop nor anti-poop subreddit, the default expectation will be poop, and anti-poop will be expected to find resistance.
When examined from this angle it really shows the importance of good moderation. I like to think that the poop flingers either get removed by moderators or in the instance where the moderators are poop flingers themselves the ingroup migrates and moderates better keeping the poop flingers out. Not of reddit itself just specific subreddits where the ingroup lives.
If I could roll my eyes any harder, I'd cause myself an injury. It's all the standards - "Oh no, reddit isn't a big group, it's just a bunch of small communities, and some of them are bad", "Oh, it's the moderators's fault", "Oh no, people don't spread through reddit, they stay neat and contained so that you can just not pay attention to the bad stuff and it's like it's not there!"
Let me give you the upshot: "It's everybody else's fault that reddit is bad except the actual people making it bad, and the people enabling them by just ignoring them."
To turn your own example back around, Hitler and the Nazis were all pretty bad, but there were good people in the Nazi Party, so you can't say the Nazi's are inherently bad. You just have to hang out with the good Nazis, who are in units with good commanding officers. As long as you don't interact with the bad Nazis, everything is fine!
When examined from this angle it really shows the importance of good moderation.
If you think that requiring strong, active, hardworking moderators on round the clock just so you can hang on to a space on the website that isn't infested by the ocean of human shit is a good thing, and that your only chance of finding somewhere that isn't awful is to carve out a beachhead against the vilest people you can think of and then vigorously defending it is a good thing, rather than a sign that the site is an ocean of human shit, maybe you need to step back and have a good, hard look at your opinion on the matter.
Those communities are like boating in a lake of sewage. You don't have any sewage on you right now, because you have your nice boat, the SS Moderator keeping you dry, and you're happy with that, but you seem incapable of asking yourself "Why, exactly, do we have to put up with a sewage lake, just because we have a boat?"
The ability to say "My community is fine" is just another way to ignore all the shitty communities on Reddit actively harassing and harming real people. The website needs to have real rules to prevent Nazi's from doing terrible shit, but the existence of subreddits that just have cute animals or memes is a constant deflection from the reality that Reddit's rules allow hate-groups to flourish. And when change is worked towards, Reddit riots until the people trying to make change are fired.
Those communities are like boating in a lake of sewage. You don't have any sewage on you right now, because you have your nice boat, the SS Moderator keeping you dry, and you're happy with that, but you seem incapable of asking yourself "Why, exactly, do we have to put up with a sewage lake, just because we have a boat?"
Assuming your metaphor is apt, which I don't concede; the answer to your why question is simple: Find another place with as optimized an algorithm for putting stuff I wanna see at the top. Literally a curated list.
A personal example for me is /r/dwarffortress. Pretty active and exclusively about a game I enjoy, the upvote system means going there is usually exactly what I wanted to see from going there. My other options on the internet are the creators site http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/ which uses the decidedly inferior most recent post is at the top.
To turn your own example back around, Hitler and the Nazis were all pretty bad, but there were good people in the Nazi Party, so you can't say the Nazi's are inherently bad. You just have to hang out with the good Nazis, who are in units with good commanding officers. As long as you don't interact with the bad Nazis, everything is fine!
For the second time now context matters, maybe this is a third rail you'll all call me a Nazi but I'd love to take a class on rockets taught by Wernher von Braun. I don't wanna take that class because he's a nazi but because he's good at rockets. Similarly /r/beekeping may or may not have some shit lords in it but I've not really seen any mostly because we talk about beekeeping there, and it's still where I go when I need help differentiating varroa mites from larvae.
If you think that requiring strong, active, hardworking moderators on round the clock just so you can hang on to a space on the website that isn't infested by the ocean of human shit is a good thing, and that your only chance of finding somewhere that isn't awful is to carve out a beachhead against the vilest people you can think of and then vigorously defending it is a good thing, rather than a sign that the site is an ocean of human shit, maybe you need to step back and have a good, hard look at your opinion on the matter.
This makes me sad because, your main point which I'll restate here as "moderation is not enough when faced with determined poo-flinging" is unarguably true. However, it's predicated on something I don't think we agree on and really comes to the root of this issue.
And this is where I tip my hand a little bit, I, perhaps because of naivete, or perhaps due to my sheltered upbringing, or perhaps, maybe just maybe because it's true, still largely think people are largely good. You constantly paint it as this cesspool of shit, and I just don't or haven't yet see/n it. We have a disagreement on first principals.
If you want to try and convince me that the site at large is bad, or that most people on it are white supremacist or something. I'm listening, but until this point you've just assumed it.
I don't sub to reddits and I don't follow the people in them to other reddits. I also don't give them any money and use ad-blockers. I only use them when other information sources come up empty. I'm probably not using them the way most people are, I'm just reporting my extremely limited experience with them.
I'm not going deny there's a lot of shitty behavior going on in other parts of reddit, it's just the way it is structured you have to actively looking for it or following people who are a part of it.
If I could roll my eyes any harder, I'd cause myself an injury. It's all the standards - "Oh no, reddit isn't a big group, it's just a bunch of small communities, and some of them are bad", "Oh, it's the moderators's fault", "Oh no, people don't spread through reddit, they stay neat and contained so that you can just not pay attention to the bad stuff and it's like it's not there!"
Let me give you the upshot: "It's everybody else's fault that reddit is bad except the actual people making it bad, and the people enabling them by just ignoring them."
To turn your own example back around, Hitler and the Nazis were all pretty bad, but there were good people in the Nazi Party, so you can't say the Nazi's are inherently bad. You just have to hang out with the good Nazis, who are in units with good commanding officers. As long as you don't interact with the bad Nazis, everything is fine!
When examined from this angle it really shows the importance of good moderation.
If you think that requiring strong, active, hardworking moderators on round the clock just so you can hang on to a space on the website that isn't infested by the ocean of human shit is a good thing, and that your only chance of finding somewhere that isn't awful is to carve out a beachhead against the vilest people you can think of and then vigorously defending it is a good thing, rather than a sign that the site is an ocean of human shit, maybe you need to step back and have a good, hard look at your opinion on the matter.
Those communities are like boating in a lake of sewage. You don't have any sewage on you right now, because you have your nice boat, the SS Moderator keeping you dry, and you're happy with that, but you seem incapable of asking yourself "Why, exactly, do we have to put up with a sewage lake, just because we have a boat?"
Reddit isn't a single entity, like a political party. It's not a lake. With the exception of the default reddits, every subreddit is completely separate from all others. In order to join them, someone has to seek them out with specific intent. They are thousands of completely separate ponds with no link beyond their domain name.
Imagine there is someone else, completely unrelated to GeekNights or anything we do. That person wants a forum. I help them out, and their forum's domain name ends up being otherforum.frontrowcrew.com. It happens to be on the same domain, hosted using the same technology. However, it is a completely separate set of people that have nothing to do with the people here. If they turn out to be shitty, does that make us shitty? Maybe, because I gave them specific permission. But what if I just opened it up and let anyone have a forum at frontrowcrew.com? Some shit forums are going to open up, and have nothing to do with me, or each other. That's what Reddit is.
Yes, if you are in one subreddit, it is likely you are in others as well. There is that tiny bit of leakage. There are also some subreddits that have high amounts of crossover. /r/photography has a lot of shared users with /r/analog. Thus, the communities there will have many shared values. Certain groups of subreddits could be considered together as a disparate community, like an archipelago.
But even then, the archipelago groupings have enormous oceans separating them. Consider /r/hockey which shares a lot of users with the subreddits for individual hockey teams like /r/rangers. Also consider /r/kpop which shares a lot of users with the subreddits for individual bands like /r/snsd. Out of thousands of users, the crossover between these two archipelagos is at most five people. They may as well be hosted at hockeyforums.com and kpopforums.com. Just because they are all hosted on reddit.com doesn't say anything about the people engaging in those virtual spaces.
The reason people think the way you do is because the Reddit brand has been, perhaps deservedly, associated with awful Internet. Without using it, you can't see the trees in that forest. Twitter brand is shit too, does that mean everyone using Twitter is one of those anonymous eggs?
If you haven't used Reddit, I highly suggest creating an account. Unsubscribe from every subreddit that it gives you by default until your homepage is blank. Then find a few subreddits that are very specific to your personal interest and subscribe to them. To start, try /r/pax, /r/yourfavoriteband, /r/yourfavoritesportsteam, /r/yourfavoritevideogame, and /r/whereyoulive. You will soon see how little horribleness appears in those areas, and how it can be just as useful as any other platform.
You will soon see how little horribleness appears in those areas, and how it can be just as useful as any other platform.
There are (reasonable) things you can't say, however, unless you feel like being stormed with downvotes and harassment. And there are popular nasty or unpleasant comments you should not reply to, unless you want more of the same. I still find reddit useful, and in some corners, tolerable. But if you do not align with the default ideology and set of assumptions, without micro-aggression blinders, the safety of silence will be heavy.
The problem with reddit is the shitheads are the default. Subs that intrinsically shouldn't lean towards or away from shitheads are generally full of shitheads. For example, this thread I just came across in r/videos.
You will soon see how little horribleness appears in those areas, and how it can be just as useful as any other platform.
There are (reasonable) things you can't say, however, unless you feel like being stormed with downvotes and harassment. And there are popular nasty or unpleasant comments you should not reply to, unless you want more of the same. I still find reddit useful, and in some corners, tolerable. But if you do not align with the default ideology and set of assumptions, without micro-aggression blinders, the safety of silence will be heavy.
Depending on the subreddit, yes absolutely. The key I have found is to stay on topic. If I stick to talking about bread in breadit, nutjobs who happen to also bake will not say nutjob things there.
Also, there are times when I make posts that begin "I know this will be down voted, I don't care" when I want to say something that is in opposition to the popular opinion of the subreddit. I do get down voted, but am often reassured by the people it brings out of the woodwork who feel the same way, but we're afraid to speak up.
For example, in a bicycle related Reddit (Im in 3) I'll post something anti-fixie. Even though I'll get a battle sometimes, I also see I'm not alone in recognizing a bike without brakes is not safe for the road and more than one gear is just better.
But that's the real problem with reddit. It's a laser focus in most cases on a specific topic, and draconian enforcement of it.
Thus, no community forms beyond sole talk about said topic, and the space of interaction becomes extremely narrow. They're not really forums so much as topical information feeds for most people.
Like the American gamers who never know eachother's names, but just want to play the game without socializing, so too goes reddit.
But that's the real problem with reddit. It's a laser focus in most cases on a specific topic, and draconian enforcement of it.
Thus, no community forms beyond sole talk about said topic, and the space of interaction becomes extremely narrow. They're not really forums so much as topical information feeds for most people.
Like the American gamers who never know eachother's names, but just want to play the game without socializing, so too goes reddit.
Why would I want to talk about bread with people who play Netrunner?
Subreddits are great for those hyperfocus things: want to find a place to discuss the episode of your favorite show that just aired? A sub will be full of commentary and theories and what not, and compared to A V Club or Facebook or other places, it's going to likely be people who follow the show and signed up to that sub specifically because they like to discuss tbe show. Yeah it's not a place you go for a grander community. I view it as exactly how Rym seems see it, as a community curated info drip. The discussion is secondary most of the timworld anyway.
The result of that hyperfocus is that most people in the "community" have zero to actually contribute.
This makes no sense. In /r/gunpla you get the best and most valuable Gundam building infos from the hardest core. In /r/sports (a tremendous subreddit) you'll have people explaining intricacies and history of Cricket. When you personally subscribe to both, you get extreme breadth as well as extreme depth.
Comments
I'm going to have to agree with Churba, having worked on the backside of Reddit for a while.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Well, maybe have to make some exceptions for the "free exercise thereof" part of the religion thing. You know, if your religion is murder or cannibalism or whatever. But the rest is 100% Scott agrees.
Wait, I also don't completely agree with the congress part. That only applies to the US federal government, and therefore also US state and local governments. It should apply to all governments everywhere in the universe.
Two minor edits, and it is perfect.
But hey, that's just government. If someone that isn't a government makes a rule that governs a space, say a place of employment, a private residence, or a web site they pay for, they can limit free speech however the fuck they want. Deal with it.
I can only imagine how they came to that design. Wait I don't have to, it's all documented or easily inferred. They chose a woman as the mascot to a movement with anti-feminist views in order to give credence to horrible ideas. Also the sweater colour has green and purple stripes for their "gif of Piccolo and Vegeta fucking" inside joke. What I'm saying is fuck that character and everything it stands for.
I'd bet Stormfront doesn't look that bad, if you only look at threads where the Neonazi fucks are just swapping recipes. And before you say "That's an unfair comparison", Reddit not only hosts a larger white supremacist community than Stormfront, but was also called out by Daily Stormer as one of the best places to recruit new white supremacists.
The Thunderhead. There. I guess you can have that one for free, you stupid neo-nazi fucks?
If you unsub from everything but /r/aww you'll get nothing but a constantly updating/rotating list of the cutest things on the internet. How is that a nazi recruitment tool?
Comment on this from an admin who shall remain anonymous as he'd like to remain employed: "yeah, they always say that when reddit's criticized. It's horseshit, there's enormous sub cross-pollination, nobody is subbed to just one. They don't want to admit they're sharing a space they like with fucking assbags."
But as an example lets say Hitler is on reddit. He's subbed to /r/thedonald and /r/painting and some other stuff. He's a nazi shitlord in sub a but can comment on brushstrokes or some shit in sub b. Context matters. If he decides to nazi shitlord it up in sub b he'll hopefully be dealt with. If not the general consensus will be that's not a good place to discuss painting anymore and it will either be cleaned up or move to a spot with better moderation.
/r/xkcd is a good example of a place that was obviously terrible at one time and got cleaned up. I acknowledge that there is evil on reddit but I just don't think that that fact makes reddit inherently evil. When examined from this angle it really shows the importance of good moderation. I like to think that the poop flingers either get removed by moderators or in the instance where the moderators are poop flingers themselves the ingroup migrates and moderates better keeping the poop flingers out. Not of reddit itself just specific subreddits where the ingroup lives.
Let me give you the upshot: "It's everybody else's fault that reddit is bad except the actual people making it bad, and the people enabling them by just ignoring them."
To turn your own example back around, Hitler and the Nazis were all pretty bad, but there were good people in the Nazi Party, so you can't say the Nazi's are inherently bad. You just have to hang out with the good Nazis, who are in units with good commanding officers. As long as you don't interact with the bad Nazis, everything is fine! If you think that requiring strong, active, hardworking moderators on round the clock just so you can hang on to a space on the website that isn't infested by the ocean of human shit is a good thing, and that your only chance of finding somewhere that isn't awful is to carve out a beachhead against the vilest people you can think of and then vigorously defending it is a good thing, rather than a sign that the site is an ocean of human shit, maybe you need to step back and have a good, hard look at your opinion on the matter.
Those communities are like boating in a lake of sewage. You don't have any sewage on you right now, because you have your nice boat, the SS Moderator keeping you dry, and you're happy with that, but you seem incapable of asking yourself "Why, exactly, do we have to put up with a sewage lake, just because we have a boat?"
A personal example for me is /r/dwarffortress. Pretty active and exclusively about a game I enjoy, the upvote system means going there is usually exactly what I wanted to see from going there. My other options on the internet are the creators site http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/ which uses the decidedly inferior most recent post is at the top. For the second time now context matters, maybe this is a third rail you'll all call me a Nazi but I'd love to take a class on rockets taught by Wernher von Braun. I don't wanna take that class because he's a nazi but because he's good at rockets. Similarly /r/beekeping may or may not have some shit lords in it but I've not really seen any mostly because we talk about beekeeping there, and it's still where I go when I need help differentiating varroa mites from larvae.
This makes me sad because, your main point which I'll restate here as "moderation is not enough when faced with determined poo-flinging" is unarguably true. However, it's predicated on something I don't think we agree on and really comes to the root of this issue. And this is where I tip my hand a little bit, I, perhaps because of naivete, or perhaps due to my sheltered upbringing, or perhaps, maybe just maybe because it's true, still largely think people are largely good. You constantly paint it as this cesspool of shit, and I just don't or haven't yet see/n it. We have a disagreement on first principals.
If you want to try and convince me that the site at large is bad, or that most people on it are white supremacist or something. I'm listening, but until this point you've just assumed it.
I'm not going deny there's a lot of shitty behavior going on in other parts of reddit, it's just the way it is structured you have to actively looking for it or following people who are a part of it.
Imagine there is someone else, completely unrelated to GeekNights or anything we do. That person wants a forum. I help them out, and their forum's domain name ends up being otherforum.frontrowcrew.com. It happens to be on the same domain, hosted using the same technology. However, it is a completely separate set of people that have nothing to do with the people here. If they turn out to be shitty, does that make us shitty? Maybe, because I gave them specific permission. But what if I just opened it up and let anyone have a forum at frontrowcrew.com? Some shit forums are going to open up, and have nothing to do with me, or each other. That's what Reddit is.
Yes, if you are in one subreddit, it is likely you are in others as well. There is that tiny bit of leakage. There are also some subreddits that have high amounts of crossover. /r/photography has a lot of shared users with /r/analog. Thus, the communities there will have many shared values. Certain groups of subreddits could be considered together as a disparate community, like an archipelago.
But even then, the archipelago groupings have enormous oceans separating them. Consider /r/hockey which shares a lot of users with the subreddits for individual hockey teams like /r/rangers. Also consider /r/kpop which shares a lot of users with the subreddits for individual bands like /r/snsd. Out of thousands of users, the crossover between these two archipelagos is at most five people. They may as well be hosted at hockeyforums.com and kpopforums.com. Just because they are all hosted on reddit.com doesn't say anything about the people engaging in those virtual spaces.
The reason people think the way you do is because the Reddit brand has been, perhaps deservedly, associated with awful Internet. Without using it, you can't see the trees in that forest. Twitter brand is shit too, does that mean everyone using Twitter is one of those anonymous eggs?
If you haven't used Reddit, I highly suggest creating an account. Unsubscribe from every subreddit that it gives you by default until your homepage is blank. Then find a few subreddits that are very specific to your personal interest and subscribe to them. To start, try /r/pax, /r/yourfavoriteband, /r/yourfavoritesportsteam, /r/yourfavoritevideogame, and /r/whereyoulive. You will soon see how little horribleness appears in those areas, and how it can be just as useful as any other platform.
Also, there are times when I make posts that begin "I know this will be down voted, I don't care" when I want to say something that is in opposition to the popular opinion of the subreddit. I do get down voted, but am often reassured by the people it brings out of the woodwork who feel the same way, but we're afraid to speak up.
For example, in a bicycle related Reddit (Im in 3) I'll post something anti-fixie. Even though I'll get a battle sometimes, I also see I'm not alone in recognizing a bike without brakes is not safe for the road and more than one gear is just better.
Thus, no community forms beyond sole talk about said topic, and the space of interaction becomes extremely narrow. They're not really forums so much as topical information feeds for most people.
Like the American gamers who never know eachother's names, but just want to play the game without socializing, so too goes reddit.
Well, that and /r/gifsound