Did Karma really matter that much in Reddit?
Reddit Migration@kbin.social – 34 points – Honestly, nobody even looks at other people's Karma. I didn't care much about it. Did people really care so much baout Karma that they mourn about it here, or miss it, or used to farm it?
Sorry if the tone sounds judgemental, but I'm just wondering.
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Karma is all about gamification. Made up points to make you feel like your contribution was worth something. You can see it in pretty much all social media platforms.
You never really care about checking others, but I bet you'd probably take a peak from time to time at your own.
I never cared, but I would be lieing if when I post blew up I wouldn't notice all those upvotes.
True. For those who don't really look at Karma, the upvotes still mattered. It feels nice when your post blows up and people liked your contribution.
I'll go and look at how my recent comments and submissions are doing, but that's more to get a sense of how my outlook aligns with the outlook of the general readership. And when the alignment is off, I'll look at other comments to see what is getting traction.
By this process, its become clear to me that the outlook of Reddit The Userbase (as opposed to Reddit The Company) has become much younger in recent years. All too often, when my positions are heavily downvoted, neighboring comments expressing more popular (populist?) positions make me think, "Yeah, I used to think that ... thirty plus years ago."
It also encouraged dumb posts. I could post a long informative comment answering a question directly and get a couple upvotes.
Then if I posted something stupid like "never insult the mac and cheese" it got over 5,000 upvotes and awards.
I didnt like to check the karma on my comments bc what if i got downvoted or worse... what if someone replied to me and id have to engage in conversation?! :0
While I agree with everything you said, it did also serve a tangible purpose on some subreddits as a barrier-of-entry to prevent bots from posting OF spam or whatever or stop new troll accounts from being able to post.