
Shahnameh
𝕯𝖝𝕯 𝖈𝖗𝖊𝖜 𝕿𝖚𝖗𝕶𝖎𝖈 𝕭𝖛𝖑𝖑
- Joined
- May 6, 2024
- Posts
- 8,086
- Reputation
- 18,666
As much as people hate to admit it, a platform requires normies to be sustainable in the long term. When you model yourself as the platform that is attractive to people that normies are uncomfortable around, you fence yourself in and put an expiration date on the platform. We're seeing that happen with reddit right now. Look at how reddit started, what it grew into at its height, and then what it has fallen to. It started off as a niche site for nerds, but gradually opened up for more and more normie acceptable topics, which attracted a lot of normie users. All of the major 'non-political' or non niche subs like askreddit, whatisthisthing, ELi5, and the rest all got regular people interested and brought in a ton of traffic. But they weren't content with letting the tiny handful of extreme leftists just sit in their little hyper leftist subs under the radar. They decided to make the whole site hyper leftist and it's driven away so much traffic that they need armies of bot accounts to give the appearance of still having the same level of traffic they did 10 years ago.
It turns out, the vast majority of regular people don't want to hear extremist stuff. Whether you agree with a particular set of extremist things, or disagree with that term being applied to what you think doesn't even matter. The fact is, there are some views, opinions, thoughts, and statements that are going to make a good 80+% of regular people uncomfortable and choose to walk away. Whether it's pushing troonism on children or constantly talking about Jews, most people aren't actually into that. Reddit went the way of becoming a hyper leftist site and drove away that 80% it formerly had. Loooskmax never got that 80% to begin with and cemented itself as a site they would never be interested in.
.win is in the same boat in fact. One of the clever things reddit pulled off, that they've since bungled, is encouraging 'default-leftism' behind the scenes. Restrain the open hyper leftism and keep it out of normie sight, but ensure that right-leaning views are also kept out of sight while encouraging mild and palatable leftist views to be slid in among the other non-political topics. Over time people begin to sway default-left without even realizing it through sheer repeated exposure. It was actually a very effective and smart tactic, and the left would have been much better off keeping it instead of taking the mask off and pushing away all those normies they previously had eating out of their hands. But they couldn't help themselves, and now reddit is dying. .win had the opportunity to employ the same strategy back when communities dot win was launched, but by being attractive to normies and having a subtle default-right slant in the background. The admins chose not to go that route, and .win gets a fraction of the traffic it got in the heady day of TheDonald dot win. All of the most popular subs on .win have at most a few dozen users and haven't made any real gains in a few years. It's functionally a dead site coasting on former momentum. Looksmax.org made the same choice.
You can A: appeal to the 80% and be somewhat attractive to your 10% while driving away the enemy's 10%, or you can B: be very appealing to your 10% and drive away both the enemy's 10% and the 80% of normies. .org, and incels.is went with option B. Reddit started with A and then in an extremely boneheaded and shortsighted move (though great for us) decided to switch to option B. And it's killing their entire platform.
It turns out, the vast majority of regular people don't want to hear extremist stuff. Whether you agree with a particular set of extremist things, or disagree with that term being applied to what you think doesn't even matter. The fact is, there are some views, opinions, thoughts, and statements that are going to make a good 80+% of regular people uncomfortable and choose to walk away. Whether it's pushing troonism on children or constantly talking about Jews, most people aren't actually into that. Reddit went the way of becoming a hyper leftist site and drove away that 80% it formerly had. Loooskmax never got that 80% to begin with and cemented itself as a site they would never be interested in.
.win is in the same boat in fact. One of the clever things reddit pulled off, that they've since bungled, is encouraging 'default-leftism' behind the scenes. Restrain the open hyper leftism and keep it out of normie sight, but ensure that right-leaning views are also kept out of sight while encouraging mild and palatable leftist views to be slid in among the other non-political topics. Over time people begin to sway default-left without even realizing it through sheer repeated exposure. It was actually a very effective and smart tactic, and the left would have been much better off keeping it instead of taking the mask off and pushing away all those normies they previously had eating out of their hands. But they couldn't help themselves, and now reddit is dying. .win had the opportunity to employ the same strategy back when communities dot win was launched, but by being attractive to normies and having a subtle default-right slant in the background. The admins chose not to go that route, and .win gets a fraction of the traffic it got in the heady day of TheDonald dot win. All of the most popular subs on .win have at most a few dozen users and haven't made any real gains in a few years. It's functionally a dead site coasting on former momentum. Looksmax.org made the same choice.
You can A: appeal to the 80% and be somewhat attractive to your 10% while driving away the enemy's 10%, or you can B: be very appealing to your 10% and drive away both the enemy's 10% and the 80% of normies. .org, and incels.is went with option B. Reddit started with A and then in an extremely boneheaded and shortsighted move (though great for us) decided to switch to option B. And it's killing their entire platform.