Reddit Considered Unhelpful

I recently deleted my Reddit account of seven years and deleted all my posts and comments. I wasn’t much of a Reddit user to begin with, to be clear, but I found myself anguishing every time I posted to the site. I reserved my Reddit usage for posting and conversing on technical topics, and keeping up with technical news. It turns out, however, that this type of usage is anathema to Reddit.

The final straw involved asking a question on r/NixOS about a particular issue I was having. I was at my wits end trying to understand why Niri was giving me a black screen upon logging in. I shared all my relevant configuration information and outlined in detail everything I had tried.

The responses?

• “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”
• “Have you tried not using Niri / NixOS?”
• “Are you sure you want to use NixOS? You don’t seem like you know what you’re doing.”

And so on. These sorts of responses are unhelpful to the point of being insulting. I’m asking about this particular problem because I want to know if anyone else has experienced it and has solved for it! I’m not looking for any other solutions!

The “turning it off and on again” response also illustrates what I think is the main issue with Reddit in general: clout chasing and the karma system. The karma system promotes groupthink, conformity, and clout seeking. I assume the commenter was trying to be funny for upvotes. Nearly every thread I see on Reddit has a million such comments. I had hoped to avoid such behavior by posting in a technical subreddit, but I guess I was wrong!

The experience really soured my impression of Reddit, and I would advise others to avoid using Reddit for anything technical, and learn from my mistake of assuming that it could be used for such a thing.