Tag letting go

Reddit’s Great lie

Max Beaulieu Leave a comment

I don’t go on Reddit anymore.

For a lot of reasons but the main one came along when I discovered a simple tool that shows the posts the moderators of different subreddits have removed.

Reddit doesn’t tell you when they do this.

When I found the tool I laughed. No way we’re any of my comments removed. I’ve never been toxic on Reddit.

I was shocked to find the moderators of various subreddits removed over 100 of my comments over the life of my time on Reddit.

And suddenly it clicked.

 All of reddit was not as it seemed on the surface a place where popularity decided the most important stories, comics , images and videos. Reddit held an agenda.

Reddit has a very specific way of seeing the world and any variation to this viewpoint would be weeded out quietly and quickly by volunteer bureaucrats.

With the crashing of glass the spell was broken. The endless well of content seemed poisoned now. Knowing as I did that nothing I said mattered. All I could do was contribute to the subreddits propaganda department.

So I quit. I stopped reading it because it was all a lie. A self generated lie where what the petty bureaucrats want to be popular becomes popular with anything that might challenge the narrative.

And to be honest. Not much has changed. I’m not so upset at the world all the time. That’s about it. Turns out scanning the headlines in the morning is all you need to stay in the loop.

And peace is worth a little less Internet street cred.

Now comes the hardest part: Letting go and moving on

Max Beaulieu Leave a comment
Photo by Matthew DeVries on Pexels.com

The election is for the most part over. I don’t want to get political here, and I wont, but aside from the legal challenges of current president, the political battle for the United State’s highest office is all but decided.

But now comes the hardest part. We need to take a good hard look at ourselves and our opponents and understand them.

To quote an ancient proverb ” When you go seeking revenge, dig two graves.” I know many in the president elect’s camp seek to other, and destroy those in the current president’s camp and vice versa, but that logic is flawed.

First off, it labors under the idea of a Zero sum game, or the idea that someone must lose in order for someone else to win. This makes sense. For most of human history our psychology and biology developed in a zero sum environment. Sometimes in order for the tribe our ancestors were in to survive they had to commit atrocities to other people. However, in today’s world of nearly unlimited resources, we no longer have to destroy someone else to win. The inner-connectivity of the world might pose many problems, but it allows us in the western world to enjoy the bounties of almost always having too much.

Second, the mindset of destroying my “enemies” is largely what got us into the highly partisan and separated mindset that we are in today. Because each time we punish a group, they remember, and they pass that remembrance onto their children who then bring that grudge to bear when they are in power. And so on and so on.

The way forward is instead one of vulnerability. We must all lay our sins to bear at the table, and once it is done say, OK, we’ve all done bad things to people, but let’s bury the hatchet.

This isn’t about making it even, or balancing one bad thing against another, but instead a period of forgiveness to forge unity. Without a common coalition the current divisiveness in the US will do nothing but worsen.

Jesus, whether you believe him to be the son of God or a wise Philosopher, had it right if someone slaps you, you offer them the other cheek. Not because you are so much better than them, but because you recognize that you yourself have done things wrong, and people deserve forgiveness, and so do you.