Reddit and What I Found There

Kevin Phillips "Reddit, Com, Vote, Comment" October 2015 via pixabay. Public Domain Dedication

I'll be the first to admit, I use almost all forms of social media. But when it comes to Reddit I'm clueless. I've never used it, let alone gone t the website. That being said I was not very excited for this blog post. To my (happy) surprise, however, Reddit was easier to use than I thought. And right off the bat I found what I was looking for.

1. What kinds of things do people in the Reddit forums seem to be arguing about, debating, disagreeing about or otherwise engaging in meaningful exhanges of ideas about?

I began my search on Reddit by just searching for "business," and I found a few stories that would work for this assignment. Many of the threads I found talked about small businesses and asked other people on Reddit (I think someone referred to them as Redditors? So we'll go with that) if they go to "mom n pop" businesses, if they support small businesses, etc. I also found threads from Redditors asking others is an undergraduate business degree was a good idea, as well as business related advice.

2. In your opinion, what are the two most interesting debates/disagreements you found in the Reddit forums?

The first interesting debates/conversations I found on Reddit was "How many of you Redditors make an effort to support local "Ma and Pa businesses/restaurants?". I chose this topic from my Reddit search because I know that small business have been having trouble in the economy lately. Many responses in this thread were from people who owned small businesses themselves and they wrote about how their regular customers were the backbone of their business and they appreciate everyone who comes in. In addition to those comments, many Redditors wrote about how them and their families support these Ma n Pa businesses whenever possible.

I also found the thread "Is an undergraduate business major worth pursuing?". I found this thread intriguing because I myself am getting a business degree (and I also do believe it is a smart move for me) and therefore I was curious what other people had to say about it. Looking through the replies I noticed that a large part of this thread turned into "my daddy said this" and "well my daddy said that" and was one big argument. Which wasn't very informative.

3. Overall, what impression do you get of your discipline based on what you saw happening in the Reddit forums?

Overall I was not very impressed by Reddit. The threads I found and looked through definitely had opinion based responses as a majority of replies. The threads are just people posting what they feel is right, or what they do, instead of factual information about whatever the question is. Therefore, if I had to pick between Reddit or Twitter for news stories, I would definitely pick Twitter first.