The Shifting Tide: How Reddit Is Changing Political Dialogue
I’ve lurked on the front page of Reddit since 2014. I’m not sure what turned me onto it, but since I’ve been a user, I’ve been able to watch the trends that are most popular on the internet. From bitcoin drama to AI and incredible gifs, I’ve been able to gauge what’s in the public eye by what makes it to the top, and it’s interesting to chart.
If you’re unfamiliar with Reddit, it claims to be the “front page of the internet,” and it lives up to that claim. It is the 8th most visited site on the internet, and it has 36 million members, with close to 60 percent from the U.S..
I’m a casual user (not even owning an account), so I’m not part of that 36 million-member figure. For every member, there are around 10 like me that feel no need to make an account, but are instead satisfied with simply spectating. That’s a user-base of around 330 million worldwide.
Reddit’s presence is pervasive, and its influence is imposing; I don’t mean this in the likeness of a corporation or government, for example. Its power comes from the voice of the individual – no truer democracy exists.
It works like this: Reddit is exclusively an aggregate site, where links to other sites’ content are posted by members, and other members can comment and “upvote” or “downvote” the content. The more upvotes a link gets, the “higher” it gets placed on the Reddit feed (or “front page”). So what you’re seeing when you open Reddit is the most popular “thing” (story/image/article/video/topic) to millions of people at that moment in time. Some of the content is funny, some informative, some pretty to look at. Some is angering and divisive. But such is public discourse. It’s like a conversation, moving constantly from one subject to another.
The types of “things” are divided into “subreddits” (just a fancy name for “category”), denoted “r/_____”. A member can subscribe to a category they’re interested in, such as science or politics. You can navigate to these categories independently from the front page to see, for example, what bits of science are the most popular at the time. It’s a great way to stay informed on literally any subject you’re interested in.
Many people go to Reddit for their news. Only 5% of Americans get their news exclusively from Reddit, but about 75% of “Redditors” (members) use the platform as their primary news source. News is notably broken faster to a large number of people by the Reddit system than a cable news outlet, or even Facebook, simply because of its structure and user base. It all happens lightning fast.
Reddit is a true, grassroots voice-of-the-people platform. By reading the top (most popular) comments on any post, you can gauge what the general consensus is from the public on the subject.
Granted, Reddit members are a skewed sample of the public and even the rest of its casual users. But Reddit demographics break down like this: About 2/3rds of members are male and about 2/3rds are of 18-29 years old. Racially, users are roughly accurate with the demographics of the U.S. at large (about 70% white, 7% black, etc).
While wonderfully democratic, like a mini free-market, Reddit can be a place of hate, division, and clear partisan propaganda, as well as vicious trollery. In some places, the political divide has never been clearer.
For example, there is a clear Left and Right when you stumble upon the little “rivalry” between subreddits r/latestagecapitalism (a sub for those who rail against capitalism in favor of social- or communism, through memes) and r/cringeanarchy (whose goal seems to be the mockery of the Left and the highlighting of their “cringey” activities, through similar memery). These subreddits are revelry; no one’s mind is getting changed from either of these. They are simply rough-and-tumble playgrounds for their members.
Reddit, by dint of its age demographic, tends to be left-leaning, at least from my perspective here on the Right. Member counts from popular political subreddits show the red-blue divide. (For a comparison, the most popular subreddit, r/funny, has 21.3 million subscribers.) From the Right: r/conservative has 165 thousand subscribers, and r/republican 59k. r/Libertarian holds 157k – I’d imagine some from the Left and Right comprise this one, but classical Liberals and those who value more independent lifestyles, tech, outdoors, craft, and guns would find themselves here. I’d imagine a large population of Trump-voters reside here as well. From the Left: r/liberal has 62k, and r/democrats has 73k. r/Socialism has 157k (r/Socialism being r/conservative’s obvious counterpart). Finally, rivals r/latestagecapitalism and r/cringeanarchy have 363 thousand and 376 thousand, respectively.
Other otherwise-neutral political subreddits show the tendencies of a left-leaning generation; r/politics and r/politicalhumor are almost exclusively Left-wing, and were even before a “red” administration.
Furthermore, on September 27th, 2018, there was a sudden purge by administrators of subreddits (like r/cringeanarchy) on the grounds that those subs promoted racism and hate. Some were banned and others were quarantined. Most of them Right-leaning subs, but some definitely white-nationalist or pseudo-Nazi subs.
You can gauge the political climate by what stories and subreddits make it to the top. For instance, on the night of the 2016 election, the groundswell for then-President-elect Trump was massive. Each post carries an image of the content it represents. The pro-Trump posts carried the same image of Trump that all the news outlets were using. That night, every single image for dozens and dozens of posts was the same – Trump’s big, denture-smiling face. Trump supporters took over Reddit.
In the few years I had been using Reddit, I had never seen anything like it. (Only since then has anything come close, and that was when net-neutrality was up for a vote). r/The_Donald is the place where Trumpsters go to show support. Other users and Reddit administrators were so overwhelmed and upset by the support and inflammatory content being posted in r/The_Donald that Reddit soon-after changed its algorithms to ensure the sub could never again gain that kind of ground. Today r/The_Donald has a whopping 676k subscribers, while the opposition sub at the time, r/FeelTheBern (Senator Sanders’ supporters), has all-but died away.
Recently, with the midterms approaching, I’ve seen a subreddit for support of Democratic representatives become popular, r/BlueMidterm2018. It showcases the frantic race for the 2018 House and Senate with candidates like Beto and McCaskill. It has around 100k subscribers.
While I can’t recall the climate of Reddit before the 2016 election coverage began, I can tell you that since that time it has been sharply divided, as noted above. With all of that said, however, I’ve just recently noticed a trend I find unbelievable, yet hopeful.
Despite fear-mongering from both sides of the media and ideological division appearing to be at a furious high, Reddit might be emerging as a uniter of the two desert-islands of vitriol. I’m noticing a change in the discourse. I can bulwark my observation with some evidence.
In the recent past, there was a popular sub r/TrumpCriticizesTrump, where tweets of the past from President Trump were used to vilify him in the present. But lately, it seems (and only recently) it has been replaced with an absolutely curious new sub called r/AskTrumpSupporters. Where, I suppose, in an effort to understand the center of the country, members ask Trump supporters questions about why they voted for Trump, what they think on certain issues, and why they hold the opinions they do. A novel idea!
What this does is constructive, two-fold. One, it normalizes “middle-America” again. It un-vilifies and re-humanizes those nasty rednecks who voted Trump into office. Two, it constructs a civil dialogue between those who, in good faith, voted for the candidate they thought was best – and those who, in faith equally as good, care to understand their perspectives. The unification and civility is tear-sheddingly beautiful.
Another curious happening is the emergence of two subs called r/changemyview and r/unpopularopinion. The first (and this is simply my own speculation), may have gained popularity through the meme featuring Steven Crowder, during his infamous “Change My Mind” segment from his podcast, Louder with Crowder. The meme blew up, which I’m assuming brought publicity to his show and the goal of that segment. The members who post, to my knowledge, are genuinely interested in having someone present a coherent, controlled argument in opposition to their own, in order to have their point of view changed, for the better. Unbelievable.
The second is equally as incredible. r/Unpopularopinion is such a departure from what we see so often in common “groupthink.” The user, often with Libertarian or Right-leaning sentiments, makes a statement that challenges a commonly held belief or trend. Rarely do we see someone challenging the narrative and gaining so much traction. The commenters can refute or agree as they see fit. But these topics, though controversial, make it near the top of the front page, from time to time! We know these conversations are civil in nature, because of how far they get while being so controversial.
Finally, I might mention one other example of the changing tides. The sub r/twoXchomosomes is, as you can imagine, a source for women and their personal struggles. Sometimes the sub can be aggressively Feminist, to the point of being anti-male. However, with addition of two subs gaining popularity, r/AskMen and r/AskWomen, the playing field is being levelled with the same, constructive devices that r/changemyview uses.
You’d think, within the circus and wake of the midterms, we would see the hysteria of 2016 repeated. But when I look closely, I see something different. Is it finally time, after the strife of division during the Obama years through the 2016 election, for us to begin to heal? Is it conceivable that those who disagree with you aren’t operating maliciously? Is it possible that, despite what Salon says, Trump supporters aren’t all Nazis, and it’s no longer acceptable to “punch a Nazi?”
What happens when we come together over ideas is that we remove the power reactionary groups like Antifa have to enact their violence. The power of the clenched fist is taken and replaced with a soft word of understanding.
I think it is possible we are in the infancy of a shift in the climate of political dialogue. I think, even in the age of the mainstream media war-profiteering on the outrage of partisanship, real Americans are turning away from the furnace and towards each other. Seemingly-opposed groups are beginning to ask one another, instead of yelling at one another.
I think the public – young people in particular – are growing weary of the constant fight they see and hear all around them. They are beginning to become numb and deaf to the screaming cries of the offended and those fishing for ratings. Hopefully the divisive actors are soon cast out in favor of uniters.
It is my opinion that Reddit should stay out of the algorithm business and instead let its members use the site as originally intended. Regardless of my opinion on how they run their own organization, Reddit is successful in a way Facebook is not. This new trend of conversation is the first constructive trend I’ve ever seen in social media.
Reddit stands alone among platforms as a true grassroots representation; it is, for the most part, a wonderfully simple, rogue, and democratic entity. It is my prediction that the members of Reddit are unknowingly using it to build a bridge for hope and a vehicle for change, through speech. Hopefully the direction developing on this popular forum will branch into other popular platforms and ultimately affect the broader culture at-large. It’s been a long-time coming, and I am hopeful.