Gen-pop on Reddit is terrible, but as someone else pointed out, it’s massive and very specialized. I’m in a forum about CPAP machines, mechanical keyboards, my city, coffee, and UX dark patterns. That’s not stuff that works on HN. They are completely different needs / value.
I've been brainstorming a site that uses HN usernames to validate identity and have a comment floor of 500 on HN to participate. It would be like HN but for political and non tech articles.
My first thought was that this is a great idea. My second is that the 500 karma metric can become a target, and lead to lower quality posts on HN. I’m not sure which is correct.
The Facebook was a whole lot of fun before the news feed, when only university students and faculty could join. Was it the wider membership, or the wider scope, that ruined it?
There's a niche subreddit for everything and they often contain valuable information that's hard to find elsewhere. It also used to be full of real posts and opinions from real people but covert advertising is now rampant on the site. I seriously hope that never happens to HN.
Lol. There are a few chemistry for the sake of drug subs. Judging by the level of discussion though, there aren't a lot of people who really know what they're doing. Most drug production involves some pretty advanced chemistry
egg_irl and all the other subs like that are incredibly scary: They are pretty much grooming echo chambers painting transsexuality and transition as hip and trendy things that solve all your issues.
> Blatant transphobia. If we applied your argument to r/conservative, it would be child grooming to become a racist school shooter.
Here's a post from within a week I found in a few minutes[1] with the top-comment being "The pipeline" about a 16 year old (minor). This is child-grooming. And if /r/conservative has a "pipeline", it's child-grooming too. Children shouldn't be encouraged in making major life decisions by internet strangers, period.
> Then you aren't Googling correctly. Once you are an expert in a field you will realize how much reddit gets wrong and the most upvoted solution can be completely incorrect.
You must not Google much. Appending "reddit" to Google search queries has been a solid strategy for years. I'm not alone. Check the top comment on this post titled "Google Search Is Dying"[2].
> Your reddit experience is entirely up to what you subscribe to. I imagine your experience is just misogyny.
Your imagination is wrong. My "experience" is /r/all which is no different than MSNBC or CNN, aka US astro-turfed media, which you conveniently avoided replying to. Reddit puts on a strong front as a "global link aggregator" but in reality it's just a heavily censored trash pile that bans anything anti-Saudi, anti-Israel, or anti-child-grooming (anti-US-trends).
An entire subreddit dedicated to castrating young people. How progressive.
The egg_irl post you picked. Sigh. Picking apart meme content and comments is stupid. But sure, lets do this to support this 'child grooming' nonsense transphobic discussion.
What you're criticizing isn't someone making a major life decision based on feedback from internet strangers. Its a person who has made a major life decision reflecting and joking about the experience in a space assumed to be for trans people trying to deal with (via jokes and memes) the overwhelming hatred they've dealt with.
A) this is clearly a stupid meme post that IN THE MEME itself indicates the person is no longer 16 (in fact if you look at post history they're now at college so > 18).
B) was responded to with a meme in an of itself. The idea of an LGBTQ+ pipeline is well known to LGBTQ+ people. Yes they'll make fun of it in response to a meme post. In ACTUAL discussion, they will earnestly discuss that transitioning isn't for everyone; don't stop because of other people, but also if you're not comfortable or transitioning isn't make you happy, you learned something about yourself (you might not be trans).
But to put a fine point on it: Telling children that they have options for self-expression besides the default gender binary isn't child-grooming. Full stop. And in marginalized communities, you may only have internet strangers to deal with (if your family/friends or local community have no safe spaces). Obviously, for such a large decision you should be working with a therapist (if there's a non-transphobic therapist in your area AND you can afford it/its available) to work through this rather than internet strangers; and that is OFTEN discussed. No one is under the impression that these are small decisions. They're just demanding that they be understood as VALID decisions.
But to boil down a trans-support group (with your 'I call it how I see it'/'won't somebody think of the children' type bullshit) as 'castrating young people' means that you're not as logical / unbiased as you think you are, you clearly DON'T know what you're talking about, AND, as the OP stated, you are transphobic.
Whether or not this is considered "grooming" is irrelevant. The truth is that only in the past 4-5 years has it started becoming commonplace for the medical establishment to provide "gender-affirming" care (aka irreversible via surgery or puberty blockers), if my child has the slightest suspicion that they, too, are one of the tiny percentage of intersex/trans people.
And if that were the case, and I refused to recognize one of my child's weekly fantasies (he likes to pretend to be a cat, but we don't take _that_ seriously), I would be considered a toxic and "transphobic" parent. That these medical procedures and gender "counseling" could provided to my child without my input or approval (in the name of "safe spaces") should be alarming to most parents.
We need to understand what's going on in our schools and with our children before we smear people with this "transphobia" neologism, because it's not productive nor conducive to discussion.
> Whether or not this is considered "grooming" is irrelevant.
It isn't irrelevant if people are using the word grooming to sensationalize the discussion and bias it towards being terrified of the 'trans epidemic/agenda'.
> if my child has the slightest suspicion that they, too, are one of the tiny percentage of intersex/trans people
That is not how any of this works. Someone doesn't go on puberty blockers or get Hormone Therapy because they have 'the slightest suspicion'. If you say to a Dr "I think I might be trans", they don't schedule you for any gender-affirming care. They'd refer you to a therapist so you can work through that (and no, the therapist isn't going to talk you INTO being trans, again, not how that works, far more likely to try to talk you OUT of being trans).
> And if that were the case, and I refused to recognize one of my child's weekly fantasies (he likes to pretend to be a cat, but we don't take _that_ seriously)
Pretending to be a cat and being trans are not comparable.
I would hope as a parent you can distinguish between these weekly fantasies and serious thoughts, feelings, and questions that your child is having about who they are.
> I would be considered a toxic and "transphobic" parent
Yeah... If your kid tells you something big (and potentially to them shameful/scary) about themselves (whatever it is) and you brush it off, that would be kind of toxic and shitty.
> That these medical procedures and gender "counseling" could provided to my child without my input or approval (in the name of "safe spaces") should be alarming to most parents.
In all states, minors who seek transgender treatment need parental consent.
> We need to understand what's going on in our schools and with our children before we smear people with this "transphobia" neologism, because it's not productive nor conducive to discussion.
I agree that this is a complex topic that requires us to have thoughtful in depth discussions, one way to do that is to stop spreading Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt you pulled from a book full of cherry-picked anecdotal stories designed to spread FUD.
> That is not how any of this works. Someone doesn't go on puberty blockers or get Hormone Therapy because they have 'the slightest suspicion'. If you say to a Dr "I think I might be trans", they don't schedule you for any gender-affirming care. They'd refer you to a therapist so you can work through that (and no, the therapist isn't going to talk you INTO being trans, again, not how that works, far more likely to try to talk you OUT of being trans).
I'm afraid that's not true, or not true anymore. Last year, via SB 5889, Washington Democrats forced insurers to cover gender dysmorphia treatment and gender-affirming care for minors between 13 and 17, without parental consent. It mandates that insurers deal directly with the patient without requiring the policyholder’s authorization. The same is true in all states except for 4 red states. [1]
Yes, if my child were serious about transitioning, we'd talk about it. But if my child is being encouraged to talk about his gender in his 3rd-grade class, which is weird and another problem in itself, that's not the same thing.
So why is it the case that "People who are aged 18 to 24 are more likely to identify as transgender"? [2]
For many of the girls in Shapiro's book, the gender craze is an unhealthy mental preoccupation, who encounter support sites on Tumblr which encourage young girls to question their gender identities and celebrates "transitioning". The concern is that the number of people transitioning due to social pressure _massively_ exceeds those who legitimately need to transition.
What's odd is that it's unacceptable to encourage kids _not_ to transition.
> I'm afraid that's not true, or not true anymore. Last year, via SB 5889, Washington Democrats forced insurers to cover gender dysmorphia treatment and gender-affirming care for minors between 13 and 17, without parental consent. It mandates that insurers deal directly with the patient without requiring the policyholder’s authorization.
I had seen references to SB 5889, though not many places other than the article you linked really discussing it.
Importantly, I don't think this is worrying. You jumped to addressing my statement that all states require parental consent (which, based on SB 5889, was wrong), but didn't address that Drs aren't giving children Gender-Affirming Care based on the 'slightest suspicion'. Even if there are isolated instances, I DO NOT see that happening broadly or epidemically. In fact, the medical community (to the detriment of all parties involved) is still very much BEHIND on dealing with trans patients. (Though getting better with WPATH etc).
> The same is true in all states except for 4 red states.
I searched the article you linked and that didn't seem to be included. I can't find evidence of 46 states allowing GAC without parental consent. Further, 15+ states are looking at passing laws BANNING GAC WITH parental consent and that's just not acceptable and seems counter to this fact.
> talk about his gender in his 3rd-grade class
What do you mean talk about his gender? When I was in 3rd grade we talked about boys and girls a lot.
Or do you mean talk about trans / non-binary people? Because you want to shield your child from the existence of people?
> So why is it the case that "People who are aged 18 to 24 are more likely to identify as transgender"?
Acceptance? LGBTQ identification has also risen over time with acceptance. It turns out that if people discourage you and tell you that what you are is disgusting, people tend not to publicly identify with it?
These aren't trans people being created, they're trans people finally identifying themselves. And it is more noticeable in younger generations because they haven't built an entire life around themselves.
> For many of the girls in Shapiro's book, the gender craze is an unhealthy mental preoccupation, who encounter support sites on Tumblr which encourage young girls to question their gender identities and celebrates "transitioning". The concern is that the number of people transitioning due to social pressure _massively_ exceeds those who legitimately need to transition.
I assume you mean the book you linked previously? I'm not going to comment or speculate on anecdata. For those girls it might have been tough to navigate and I feel for them, that doesn't mean it is an epidemic, it just means the book alleges its an epidemic.
The assertion that the number of people now identifying as trans/non-binary "_massively_ exceeds those who legitimately need transition", isn't born out by current evidence, seems potentially explained by acceptance, and seems very akin to the shock people had at how many people were LGB when that started gaining acceptance (and the idea of being gay because you thought it was cool).
> What's odd is that it's unacceptable to encourage kids _not_ to transition.
I don't know what to say if you earnestly think that's the minority view. It isn't. Which is why being trans sucks...
As I said before (then flippantly, now more seriously), yes this is a complicated topic made more so by the discussion of children and transition. But
sensationalizing, fear-mongering, and irrationally banning things because technically my kid COULD (with a shitty dr and a slight suggestion) get GAC is just going to make things worse.
I too worry about the trend of pushing children too soon into transgenderism and especially chemical induced changes.
OTOH, calling it grooming is out of line and I personally get really tired of people trying to appropriate negative words to further their own personal agenda. It's possible to disagree without calling it grooming.
If this is grooming, then so is teaching a child that loyalty and trustworthiness are important. It's grooming in only the most technical sense, which is not what that word means in common vernacular.
The people involved in this are earnest in wanting to prevent harm (albeit misguided imo), an actual groomer is someone who is purposefully shaping a person so as to __cause__ harm.
I don't see how it's "transphobic" to acknowledge that transitioning is an attempted solution to a mental disorder that we should not be appearing to encourage people in. There is a difference between being accepting, kind, and equal in treatment towards trans people, and encouraging it with young people. It really is a different subject than "mere" sexuality.
> transitioning is an attempted solution to a mental disorder
It is not a mental disorder, APA updated guidance and removed it from the DSM in 2012[1]. Though gender dysphoria caused by being trans is. That's an important distinction; you aren't trans because something is wrong with you and being trans isn't something that's wrong with you.
> that we should not be appearing to encourage people in.
Is being trans something that can be encouraged in non-trans people? Not a single cis person that I know (when asked) has ever said they'd thought they might be a different gender. Didn't even cross their minds. And after being asked about it for 2 seconds they all instantly responded "no, definitely NOT trans", without hesitation.
> There is a difference between being accepting, kind, and equal in treatment towards trans people, and encouraging it with young people.
I appreciate that you emphasized accepting, kind, and equal in treatment here. But a few thoughts:
- When does a person go from encourage-able young person to fully fledged trans-person? Who draws that line?
- This sounds a bit like making young trans people go through a discouraging crucible and if they grow up to be trans it must be true. Which just sounds like a way to guarantee that trans people have terrible child hoods.
- Despite your phrasing, in the context of the rest of your post, it sounds more like you're willing to humor trans-people than truly considering them valid. (If I'm wrong, sorry and ignore) If that's the case, thank you for prioritizing treating people well, but trans people are valid. They don't need people to humor them, they need people to just believe what they say about their own bodies.
Whats funny is that 12 or however many years ago digg was practically demolished for taking down that blu ray encryption code but now all the censorship and astroturfing on reddit is absolutely fine as long as it confirms peoples’ biases. I’ve given up on r/all and just use r/home, even though its top5 results aggressively suggest you keep going back to the last 2 subs you visited.
> the most upvoted solution can be completely incorrect
This is correct. The value you get from a good Reddit conversation is like a good Wikipedia page; it gives you the lay of the land an an idea of what people believe, which is surprisingly valuable.
Wikipedia feels like a weird cross of social media, Ted Nelson's Xanadu and good publicity. Opinions will show up; if the opinion show up in another media source, it can be repeated as fact.
Moreover, Wikipedia has its own social grouping dynamics and it's own equivalents of gamification; it just seems 'serious' as the outcome is something that masquerades as factual. (This is an admittedly cruel take on Wikipedia, but there are plenty of comments about the inaccuracy of many Wiki articles that back my opinion)
A good Reddit opinion-based conversation is often useful, much like a good Wikipedia article can be. "How does the soup taste at Pho Daddy" is better answered by a social media post with a dynamic trust list than a list of ingredients.
(We don't really have the trust list, but we do have a list of previous posts that can use on Reddit to see if the person seems similar enough to us)
