On Reddit

I made my first Reddit account in 2014. Initially, I discovered Reddit through /r/DotA2, but as I expanded to other subreddits, it became the bulk of my online browsing. The only things I ever posted were some of my videos to /r/montageparodies when those were a thing. Apart from that, I would borderline obsessively read a handful of subreddits. I read them so much that eventually, there was no new information to gain. Every sub devolves into either the same 20 questions or the same 5 jokes. I could basically predict the comments before reading them.

The overwhelming majority of my time spent on Reddit was a complete waste, but there are two subreddits that unquestionably had a positive impact on my life. When I was 16 or 17, my dad told me that if you paid off your credit card on time, then the rewards were just free money. This fascinated me and led me to /r/PersonalFinanceCanada from which I learned about passive index fund investing. I would have probably found out about index funds one way or another, but having learned about them so early has substantially increased my net worth. /r/churningcanada was another subreddit that’s earned me thousands of dollars. I opened my first credit card on my 18th birthday. After a couple of years, I had collected a sign-up bonus from every major bank. A couple of years after graduation, I had gone through most worthwhile credit card bonuses.

I was always cognizant of the fact that Reddit is not reality. In 2016, Reddit made it seem like Bernie was headed for a 50 state sweep. In 2019, Hong Kong’s independence was coming any day. And since 2022, the Russian state is days away from total collapse. I had accepted that the Reddit hive mind is brain dead when it came to any political issues, but I still had faith in it when it came to less heated topics like travel or career advice. That is, until I gained enough experience in these topics to see that the hive mind’s opinion on them is just as flawed as with politics.

The issue is that anyone who posts on Reddit is not a normal person. The 1% rule is the notion that very few users actually create content. This wouldn’t be awful if the 1% were somewhat representative of the general population, but it’s not. I’ve come to realize that of that 1% 99% of them have no meaningful experience in the topic, exclude a key piece of information that makes their situation irrelevant, or are just straight up lying. This isn’t entirely a new realization, but the scale of it is. I used to think that if I wade through the garbage, I could find some useful information like I had on /r/PersonalFinanceCanada. I no longer think this is the case.

If you go off of /r/cscareerquestions/ or /r/ExperiencedDevs/, I would forgive you for thinking that the Joads had it easier than the average software engineer today. It is entirely doom and gloom. No one is getting hired, or if they are, then it’s only to be laid off after 3 months. I must be living on a different planet. I reactivated my LinkedIn account a month ago and have had recruiters from start-ups and established companies reaching out regularly. My friend recently graduated and was able to get a job within a couple of months. But even knowing this, I’ve noticed that I’m letting the negativity I read online affect my decisions. If someone really has sent out 1000 applications or been searching for a job for 2 years, there’s probably something wrong with them. This is not a data point that I need in my head. No potential piece of information that I can find on Reddit will outweigh the damage done by constantly reading all the negativity.

After Reddit’s API changes and the death of Apollo for Reddit, my usage of Reddit dropped by 90%. This lasted for about a year, but then my usage started slowly increasing. As of late, I’ve gotten into the habit of browsing a handful of subreddits through Safari on my phone. Even with the garbage UX, I’m spending over an hour a day polluting my mind. Enough is enough, I’m committing to cutting this out. You are what you read, and I don’t want to devolve into the average Redditor.