I've been nervously eyeing my own score as it climbs, and now that it's nearing 100k I'm beginning to think that's a sign I need to quit.
That's mostly because I have yet to think of any reason to believe that upvotes, let alone downvotes, can be good for a person's emotional health, let alone our social equilibrium.
The only thing karma seems useful for is egoism.
Would love to be proven wrong. CMV.
Tell me something good about reddit that comes from anyone's karma (score ÷ age) beyond serving as a rapid indicator of the terminally online.
/u/scrambledhelix (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post.
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Delta System Explained | Deltaboards
Do you have a big head about your 100k?
I mean, I'd be lying if I denied a tiny lizard's sense of thrill about it. The fact that thrill exists at all is a good sign of how bad it is.
Noticing that thrill drove me to post this.
If you never tell anyone about the thrill you’re getting, why is it bad? It’s not hurting anyone
It absolutely could be hurting OP. Social media addiction is a real thing.
That’s true, but I’m just going off of what OP has said so far. I’m not trying to make any assumptions
I've a strong conviction that emotions, especially the base ones, are not under our control. What we can learn to do is accept and manage them, but then not everyone gets the opportunity to learn.
From that perspective, I try to be aware of my own emotions, because (another strong conviction, this one learned) if you treat your emotions as attitudes, in the sense that they color your evaluation of the world around you in sometimes surprisingly powerful ways, then by identifying those tiny lizards early you'll be alerted to any need for adjustment in your own tone with others.
I don't need to tell anyone about it unless it's a lizard I haven't see before, and for anyone reading this who needs it, tell a therapist or closest friend if you spot a new one, too. So far reddit karma's only been good for attracting them.
I may have gone a little far with the lizard meme, but I stand by it
It's really nothing to be thrilled about - it's largely meaningless, my most upvoted comment by a mile was a throw-away one liner in a front page post, and I'm sure most people with high karma counts have a similar experience
You can very easily rack up a high karma count despite posting nothing of any substance by posting in popular subs echoing the common opinions found in that sub. Simple bots have been doing a great job of this for years, it isn't a high bar to clear
Karma is a mechanism to define the order of posts in thread. It's neither positive or negative inherently, you can get 10 upvotes for a highly informed, detailed post on a niche subject you're an expert on, or 2000 upvotes for posting a 10 word joke on a front-page post
If you think it's a sign to quit and that it's a sign you're terminally online, that's probably because you know your browsing habits aren't healthy regardless of your karma score (and no doubt something a lot of people relate to, even if they have 2k karma or 200k)
If you are willing to accept technicalities, every comment you make has one upvote by default (presumably from yourself). That means that someone who is posting with nobody else reacting will still accrue karma. Therefore not all karma is "negative karma", at least some of that karma is just effectively meaningless.
Another thing karma can be useful for is gauging the community's reaction to something without considering direct responses. For example EA posts something in an interview and more than half a million people downvote it. You had better believe that there was a team meeting over that karma which probably influenced their future behavior.
That sort of thing isn't just useful for huge companies. Individual people also care about their public image and a bit of feedback can be useful. What you seem to actually be arguing against is people becoming excessively focused or proud of their karma total. Sure, that isn't great. But that doesn't make the whole concept detrimental.
!delta
I am!
I mean, all of it is meaningless, in that sense. The only thing it indicates is a level of engagement with the platform.
If you accept technicalities, isn't that still negative karma?
I kid. Yes, gauging agreement is useful...ish. Full of traps though. Without sustained time spent in a sub, it's hard for a human to get a grip on the prevailing attitudes in it, and that is something. I'll take it though, thanks.
Think I didn't communicate this well, but I also had in mind the trap of thinking that a high comment score indicates genuine agreement or not.
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Phage0070 (113∆).
Delta System Explained | Deltaboards
Karma is a useful tool for quickly gauging if a user is legit or a troll. A user with low karma is new or low-effort user, and are sometimes banned from posting in subreddits that are targets of malicious campaigns.
For those that want to use reddit to push propaganda or disinformation, this makes it more difficult because you can't just create a bunch of accounts for your bots, you need accounts with a history of meaningful contributions
I think that this is only true above a certain point. Once you reach 500 karma, for example, you've already proven that you're not a troll. After that, it's redundant (for that purpose).
Depends on the timeframe. Over 10 years? I’d likely raise an eyebrow lol and wonder if a discussion is worth my time depending on the subreddit. Over 6 months? Not really a red flag.
Is there anything wrong with the number serving a single purpose, and then being redundant after that?
Sooo it sounds like Karma allows you to judge the source of an idea rather than the idea itself?
Which suggests that users with a high karma-to-age ratio are intensely engaged, to where they're either terrible people leading mobs around, or a clanker doing the same, yes.
Well you see, there's the root of the issue. What makes a contribution meaningful? And is karma a good indicator of that in a sea of trolls or clankers?
Apologies for the rhetorical questions.
I can understand karma accepted by anyone as a measure of meaning in the sense that a score delivers information about other redditors. But what good is there to take from our own scores?
A high karma ratio means they're engaged, yes. Why does it have to mean more than that?
It seems you want to interpret all this deep meaning in an account's karma. I don't understand why. Once you have seen how engaged a person is, the number has served its purpose. Is there anything wrong with that?
Posting something you created on reddit and getting loads of upvotes for it is to some extent equivalent to showing your friends something you made and getting load of compliments. It's more distilled and less meaningful obviously, as every upvote is just a little dopamine hit, and giving an upvote costs little compared to taking the time to pay someone a compliment, but if you see it for what it is getting some self-validation from people enjoying what you made doesn't necessarily seem emotionally unhealthy to me.
!delta
Now there's a refreshingly optimistic take. Thank you.
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/CrushingBore (2∆).
Delta System Explained | Deltaboards
I mean it also is a way to sort content by what's popular/unpopular based on the users with accounts that engage with the system. That's a utility function. Sure there can be detrimental psychological effects like you describe, but that doesn't mean there isn't a use for karma.
Yeah, a scoring system for how engaged you are on a platform isn’t great, especially when it’s easily compared to that of others.
In terms of the CMV: it can be useful as a basic way of validating and reducing the number new bot accounts from participating in subreddits.
I'm going to hit you with a very Buddhist answer.
It's not the karma that's the problem - it's the attachment to the karma.
I think Reddit, at its best, is a highly valuable forum for people to discuss ideas - especially niche ideas that you might not be able to discuss easily with an in-person group. And karma is a natural part of how Reddit works.
But if you get attached to that, you're going to be afraid to have difficult conversations. I waded into a conversation on AI in which I advocated for a middle ground. I knew before I posted that I was going to get shredded there, but it was my authentic opinion, and it was a viewpoint not being shared. If I wasn't willing to lose karma, then the conversation would go from an honest conversation to an echo chamber.
So not only does caring about your karma matter for you personally, but it can make Reddit function more poorly as a place for honest and open discussion.
So in short, the karma is fine. Worrying about the karma is the issue.
Someones karma score doesn't tell you too much about their activity. Even when accounting for age (of the account I assume).
I can have the same karma as someone with twenty five posts from just one post.
I could be terminally online but so middle grounded in my opinions that the balance is minimal thus making me look offline for most the time.
I definitely agree that it also doesn't speak to any positive conclusions either.
And I also agree it shouldn't be used to judge yourself (positively or negatively) but I also think the average reddit user doesn't care that much about their karma unless they're part of a sub that requires a certain karma to participate in. Though I could just be projecting myself onto most users.
You might just be projecting your negative feelings about your karma concern onto other users as well though.
I would say that karma accrued on individual messages does tend to be a good reflection of what the community thinks about a certain take. Higher karma means that take is more relatable/agreeable
So if someone has lots of karma accrued, it might just mean they have a lot of takes that their communities find generally agreeable. It could just mean they spend a lot of time online as you said, but if their takes are disagreeable then that would also reflect in their karma as they could potentially have negative points
Why you care like at all? I have checked my karma maybe twice in the decade and a half I have been using for Reddit.
Karma is a useful way to numerically sort comments and posts for you in a simple and transparent way. Your total karma accrued on your profile is a secondary consequence. If it effects your ego at all then you need to go outside lol.
It was the primitive “algorithm” before tik tok made an algorithm that sorted your posts for you. I prefer the transparency of this.
I view karma more as a metric for individual posts and comments. As in, how are various people feeling about the thing I just posted or what someone else posted? I basically never look at my total karma score, but this aspect of the system has plausible utility.
I have over 250k Karma. Five minutes ago, I didn’t know this.
It’s a weird metric by which to define your ego, so just ignore it. Sure, it allows me to post on some subs that limit by age or karma, but that’s worthless in real terms.
karma may serve reddit in some way (rather than reddit users). those who design these things are doubtless very clever and understand much about how to shape traffic to best suit their purposes... positively, perhaps?
I definitely have a lot of karma that was a waste of time but I also have a ton related to discussing books, politics, cooking, films, movies and personal shit for which I'm a better person.
I'm not going to sit here and argue Reddit karma is good but nothing about it seems negative either. It's neutral. It's meaningless numbers going up or down on a meaningless website.
Ive been on reddit for 8 years and I dont think I've ever bothered understanding what karma is lol. I dont look at mine nor at others.
I don't even know where to find my "karma". If I'm not aware of it, how does it affect me?
I just looked at my karma for possibly the first time ever.
It's got some use in moderation. Does help to keep trolls under control.
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