He touches on reddit becoming very picture heavy circa 2012 but doesn't guess on why. My theory is that it is because RES. RES has a "view all images" feature that automatically opens all links out to images the page and an "endless reddit" feature that loads the next page once you scroll to the bottom. This makes it very easy to mindless scroll through reddit, looking at and up-voting pictures and ignoring any other content.
Its my personal opinion that this has really hurt the depth of content. Its still a fun site, just very different then when I first went there ~6 years ago.
EDIT: Not to say RES isn't a great project and super useful. I use it and really appreciate it. Its just interesting how ease of use can shape the content and culture of an online community.
The other big boost to images taking over was the popularity of imgur. Other picture hosting sites were so poor that I think it actually reduced the amount of picture content prior to 2009.
Interesting quote from the AMA: "Imageshack tried to buy it 6 months after I made it". I'm sure everyone is glad he didn't sell. IIRC half of imageshack links were "bandwidth exceeded" messages
I think reddit being picture heavy is just a cause of its exploding popularity. Ever follow a subreddit from infancy to infamy? You'll see as it grows, there will be more and more posts of just pictures/memes, which in turn will cause users to complain, mods to step in to filter these out, more subreddits dedicated solely to memes about this topic, etc.
While I do think RES is awesome, most of my non-tech friends who browse Reddit (usually on their phone) haven't even heard of RES.
>He touches on reddit becoming very picture heavy circa 2012 but doesn't guess on why. My theory is that it is because RES. RES has a "view all images" feature that automatically opens all links out to images the page and an "endless reddit" feature that loads the next page once you scroll to the bottom. This makes it very easy to mindless scroll through reddit, looking at and up-voting pictures and ignoring any other content.
Nah, nothing to do with RES, that's just how things tend to evolve without strict moderation. The race to the shortest, funniest thing always ends in images because it's easy to consume and upvote.
> The race to the shortest, funniest thing always ends in images because it's easy to consume and upvote.
I honestly think that reddit would be better if they killed karma, or at least killed displaying it to the users. The obsession over it dominates the site with people posting cheap shit to get more of it, other people shitposting to see how far negative they can go, people complaining that one thing got karma while another thing did not, etc.
Performance concerns could also be related. As Reddit got slower and bigger, stuff that looked awesome right from the thumbnail or headline with no loading became more successful.
I disagree. Nothing to do with RES? Before RES you had to click on images. Images in comments were even weirder being an all text site (as in, the opposite of forums with image signatures). RES, with its expando, made this a one button change, especially with the "view all images" button. To say it was 0% RES and 100% moderation is false. It can be both you know.
If I remember correctly, which is doubtful, picture posts became more popular, and while Reddit has the ability to shape the types of content that make it to the front page, they chose not to as this seems to express the will of the users.
Its my personal opinion that this has really hurt the depth of content. Its still a fun site, just very different then when I first went there ~6 years ago.
EDIT: Not to say RES isn't a great project and super useful. I use it and really appreciate it. Its just interesting how ease of use can shape the content and culture of an online community.