Another Attempt at Series Book Discussion on Reddit

I created the Vintage Series Books subreddit in December 2020.  I want to see if I can get the subreddit to gain some ground.  If I could get some more series book collectors to join the subreddit with me, we might be able to have a go at it.  Some people are already there, but not enough are.  I expect this to be a difficult uphill battle.

Those of you who are on Facebook will likely not be interested.  That's the reality, since you have a social media site that works for you.  I haven't been happy with Facebook in years.  I will continue on Facebook since that is where nearly all series book discussion is, but I yearn for good discussion somewhere outside of Facebook.

I spend a lot of time on Reddit, far more than I do Facebook.  I find Facebook to be a bit bland these days.  When I join groups about certain topics on Facebook and join subreddits on those same topics, the discussions are much better on Reddit.  One notable example is the television series Big Brother.

Several years back, I joined three Big Brother groups on Facebook.  I left one of them pretty quickly when it became apparent that the admin was a bully who liked to denounce people in group posts when she kicked them out of the group.  She was toxic, so I left.  

I remained in the other two groups, but very quickly, I noticed how poor the discussions were.  Inaccuracies and outright lies were posted as fact, and the people posting them tended to get away with it.  Members posted lots of truly stupid stuff, and so I found the groups to be very low quality.

Big Brother discussion on Reddit and some other websites is better by a huge amount.  I quit going to the Facebook groups.  A couple weeks ago, after not having visited the Facebook groups for a couple years, I checked in on them.  I saw misinformation in recent posts in each group, information that I knew to be false because of the extensive discussions elsewhere online.  I immediately left both groups and consider them worthless.

Early in the pandemic, I joined some Covid groups on Facebook.  I had to leave immediately because of the poor moderation which allowed misinformation.  Meanwhile, Reddit had informative subreddits where misinformation was shut down quickly.

I have been following a current news story.  I'm on Reddit.  People there have mentioned the fighting and flaming going on in the corresponding Facebook group.

Famous people sometimes do AMAs (Ask Me Anything posts) in subreddits.  They'll post a photo of themselves while holding a piece of paper with their Reddit ID as proof that it's really them.  They usually don't stay long, but they do answer some of the questions.  That's neat.

The subreddit for Only Murders in the Building has attracted some of the people connected with the show.  Sometimes an actor will randomly pop in.  Other times, someone will do an AMA.

Facebook is a low effort, low quality site.  I believe that Facebook's algorithm has on average lowered the ability of people to interact intelligently.  We must put up with Facebook, since everyone is there.

Reddit is better at fostering discussion.  While Reddit users tend to post short comments, they are sprinkled with a heavy dose of humor that I find delightful.  The tone on Reddit is much better than Facebook.  People are much more likely to engage in lengthy discussions in among the short comments, resulting in many responses. 

Reddit is a throwback to the old Internet.  The plainness of the interface is similar to what we had in the old Yahoo! groups.  I like it.

Reddit works by using a system of upvotes.  When a good comment is upvoted, it floats up higher in the list of comments attached to the post.  Posts also can get upvotes, and this causes them to float up higher in the subreddit.  The upvote/downvote system helps to keep the low quality comments down at the bottom where they are less likely to be noticed.  

Last night I made a number of posts in the subreddit, using some of my recent posts from Facebook.  I am going to try to put in some effort and continue doing so at least in the short term. 

I hope that some of you who are not on Facebook will consider joining Reddit.  I understand that Facebook users won't be interested, and that's okay.  I'd love to reconnect with those of you who avoid Facebook.  We can have our own parallel discussions about series books. 

To join Reddit, you just need an email address.  You create a user ID, and you're in.

r/VintageSeriesBooks/