I took a side-trip to Reddit to re-post some of my ideas/adventures thinking ‘like minded’ people there might be interested, people at such sub-reddits as Bushcraft, Ultralight, Wilderness Backpacking, Camping and Hiking for example. You would think so, wouldn’t you? There was considerable interest from the readership, as you might imagine.
Unfortunately, like much of the media, these ‘sub-reddits’ are controlled by a small clique of control-freaks and extremists – by and large very rude people as well! Even though I sought (and gained) prior approval to share these posts from their ‘moderators’, nonetheless they were universally condemned and/or removed by the moderators and their extremist allies even though clearly the great majority of Reddit readers (ie 19 out of every 20) just came over for a look and most stayed for a much longer visit –and I thank them for it! The clique staged a massed campaign of ‘down-voting’ as well as frivolous, rude and contemptuous commenting – this from folk who have not a shadow of our bush experience – and much of it carried on in secret (from the ‘community’) in that it occurred after my posts were taken down in contravention of an expressed promise otherwise. I should mention that neither the moderator at MYOG or Trail Meals acted like this, indeed quite the contrary (and thank you) – but there are many negative commentators nonetheless who serve only to alienate people like me from engaging with Reddit.
If such social media is to persist, the 95% need to wrest control from the 5%, else it will ultimately fail, or society itself will fail. This extremist ‘cell’ revolutionary method has ever been the means by which democracy has been overthrown by fascists, communists and other enemies of society. Evidently much the same behaviour applies also at Twitter. Facebook (with its emphasis on ‘liking’) seems much friendlier. Pinterest and Instagram even moreso.
Needless to say, I will be mostly abandoning Reddit, save those small sub-reddits which have shown interest rather than abuse. It is (at least as presently constituted) a quite anti-social ‘social medium’, and I suggest you also avoid it, as it is likely only to upset you, as it has me. I will concentrate on improving the accessibility of my site.
I noticed, whilst this was going on, that for some mysterious reason Word Press has shrunk nearly all my photos (some so that they are almost impossible to make out). It is a mysterious vehicle. Apparently you can click on them to see a larger version, but I’m sure people would rather a larger, clearer image at the outset – so, I will work my way gradually through the nearly 900 posts and enlarge all the photos, many thousands of them. This may take some time, and naturally posting will be a bit lighter while I get this done.
I also noticed that the meta tags (at the bottom of each post – which is what helps the search engines find the post when you do a search for a particular topic) are missing on most of my posts. A search engine therefore might not find some of my ‘camp shoe’ or ‘South Coast Track Fiordland’ & etc posts (to give an example), even though there might not be any other appropriate posts anywhere on the net on that topic. This is an even bigger job and will take some time. Please bear with me.
Oh, and thank you for your continuing support (including many messages of such) here at ‘The Ultralight Hiker’ & on Facebook, Instagram, etc – Yes, even on Reddit! So far here I have only ever had one slightly negative comment which was down to poor wording rather than malice – which is nice. As I’m sure you understand, this blog is ‘a labour of love’. Such support is appreciated.
Meanwhile, my wonderful new NBN internet connection is playing up again (as always) and is just so slow. I need to see if I can negotiate with the ISP/NBN to get this improved. The ‘information super highway’ is just crawling along here…No doubt others have the same problem.
A reader writes:
‘I’ve never understood self-promotion rules on subs.
If someone is producing good content, they have every right to maintain ownership of that content rather than posting it as text on some corporations social network.
Producing content takes time and effort, something which shouldn’t go without reward.
Not to mention Google duplicate content penalty and having Reddit steal your search engine listing. If you were to copy/paste it as suggested.’
A much more sinister reason for avoiding them.
I discovered the Reddit Ultralight group a couple of weeks back, and have taken a look or two.
“Prolix” is a handy word to know.
Looks like there may be an occasional idea, but it’s been tedious to find anything of use (so far).
Unfortunately, in my limited experience anyway, you either get slammed by someone whose only purpose in life is to be nasty, all the time, about everything, without apparently reading anything, or one of the administrators blithely deletes something you’ve written “just because”.
Anyhow, I have been reading you for a year or so, and always enjoy your enthusiasm. (And have learned a fair amount as well.)
Thank you.
And thank you very much too Dave – I am sorry others are having the same experience with Reddit groups. I can’t imagine why they are like that.
Concur with your speedy assessment of Reddit and reddiquette. It is a terrible place, but I can’t stop going back to the echo chamber again and again, though I don’t participate anymore. As far as your NBN woes go, I have been fighting this battle for the last 2 months. I can’t offer you a solution, but I can tell you where we stand in our region.
There is absolutely nothing that individual ISPs can do about the current congestion. They are simply re-selling the NBNCo product. Blame lays solely on the shoulders of NBNCo who have oversold the capacity of the tower cells on the fixed wireless network. This flies in the face of their original agreement with the Government that each cell would only be sold to a set capacity, precisely to avoid these sorts of issues.
On the bright side, promises have been made that cell capacity will be upgraded before the end of the 2nd quarter, so we should see some relief before July. However, given the rate and intensity of advertising for the NBN in this region, it will not be long until we are right back to having the same service provided.
NBNCo are accountable to NOBODY, and all of the alternatives are rapidly being shut down. This is a savage situation for regional customers.
My own ISP has sent me plans for 3 consecuitive service disruptions from the 18th to the 21st of April – last time this happened, it was an upgrade to our tower so I’ll keep my fingers crossed, but my expectations low.
Thank you for your comment and support. As regards the NBN, we retained our copper wire and an ADSL service as the NBN is so intermittent. We are/were hoping that we could upgrade this to VDSL which we had previously been advised (back in 2006 when Eftel were getting ready to install it for free) that we could expect approx 3- 4 times the speed even though we are 3.4 km from the exchange (because our rural wires are so thick). We are hoping that this is still the case and that we can add the speed of this service to the speed of the NBN.