The people websites attract

[AeroMatter]

A lot people go after Reddit for "circle jerking," and people go after Tumblr for being "an echo chamber." At first glance these seem like generalizations to make a broad assessment about the sites, but I wonder though. Is it the sites themselves that causes this, or is it the users to blame? Like is it site functions that attract certain types of people, or is that a coincidence? To use Facebook as an example it seems to attract "normal" people, while Tumblr attracts the more quirky and unique types, and Twitter attracts the people that seem to be in between. That's an observation I've made but I'm not sure what it is that leads these websites to attract the certain demographics they do.

Thoughts on this?

[Zha Hong Lang]

I'm estimating that part of it has to do with the kind of content provided by the website itself. Reddit is primarily based around votes, (discussion as well, though votes will determine what discussion you see most of the time) so it's more prone to circlejerking than tumblr or facebook, which brings you content more based around what direct sources you're subscribed to. In addition, Facebook and Tumblr are more open toward sharing media within your post, rather than just linking offsite where the actual host is imgur, youtube or something. I'm not entirely sure what all of the effects of that are, but it is a stark difference between the sites.

I don't use tumblr or facebook, but from the little I've seen others use them (and what I've heard from various sources in the past) it seems like the main difference is policies. Facebook is focused more around using your personal identity for your account, which makes it easy for someone who just wants to upload pictures of them and their friends/family so that their other friends/family can see it. However, Tumblr doesn't really have such restrictions, so I'm assuming that's why it's not typically seen as casual. I have seen those who use tumblr as others use facebook, though.

[Mandew]

People will join with who they relate with, so early adopters will determine the 'trend' that outsiders see.

That being said, it only applies to those who are vocal - which is to say, a very small percentage of people on any given website. Even if not a whole lot of people on tumblr have stereotypes associated with specifically tumblr, it'll seem like the stereotype is strong because it's the people you hear from and about the most.

Another thing is that someone will not necessarily have anything to do with stereotype x when joining the site, but if they are weak-willed they may have peer pressure applied to them, or if they are influencible they'll just assimilate what they see.

[Ashan]

Reddit's voting system screws it because nobody uses it like they're supposed to (upvote what contributes to the discussion, downvote what doesn't), and just upvotes what they agree with and downvotes what they disagree with. So the popular opinion bubbles up to the top. I find this is worse in default subs, since it's basically just everyone in 1 place, with no barrier to entry. But if you go searching for subreddits you like, you'll generally end up with people who weren't just plopped there when they made an account, and you might see a bit less of that. But within those communities, if there's disagreements, you see it and it's as annoying as ever.

With tumblr, it has a system where you subscribe to get content from people/blogs, rather than a topic. So you subscribe to get content from a person you trust to give you good content, rather than subscribing to a feed about a certain topic and relying the community to bump the important stuff to the top. With Tumblr, you're not guaranteed to get a feed of the content you signed up for. Every time I log into tumblr, I end up getting posts about stuff which I have no idea what it is, from people who I don't know who they are. And so when a teenage girl makes a tumblr account and follows a blog that usually posts low-framerate gifs of whatever new hunky British actor is popular at the time, they end up with stupid personal posts about the person running the blog, and/or posts about unrelated social justice stuff or what have you. Prettyboy gifs are the gateway into tumblr chicks sharing around their outrage porn and sending out the job lynch mob on someone for a stupid post they skimmed that was missing important facts about the situation.

Both sites breed shitty people, but both sites have some great contributors on them, so you just wade through the shit looking for the good stuff.

[Jesuiscontent]

Reddit is good if you're looking for information, but complete garbage on everything else, especially discussion. Since you can create your own board it seems like it has a pretty heterogeneous userbase?

Twitter is good if you want fresh memes -> generally used by young people

Facebook is good if you want 2008 memes -> generally used by old people

Never used tumblr