Why is reddit so negative?

Reddit being what I'd call pretty postive.

There's grim stuff int the discussions, but I wouldn't call them a case of default net nastiness. Is this atypical for reddit?

A couple of reasons:

1. It's easier to be negative than to be positive.

2. In status games played at the level of teenagers (of whatever chronological age), by criticising something you place yourself above it, but by praising it you place yourself at or below. This is a strong motivation for the immature to be negative about everything.

Going off on a bit of a tangent from this:

This is one reason I don't read reddit. (The other is that a collection of stuff selected only by the criterion "someone thought this link worth sharing" isn't going to have a significant proportion of stuff I want to read. It will just be a useless distraction.)

For the same reason, I don't read sucks sites in general, e.g. xkcdsucks.com or lesswrongsucks.com, I mean, talk about writing down your bottom line first. I don't even read badscience or Pharyngula, sterling service though they do in the cause of rationality. There's enough bad science out there for them to be free of the bottom line fallacy, but I don't need to read them torpedoing idiocy every day, however deserving their targets. It's good that they exist, but I'm not bookmarking their RSS.

As a rule of thumb, I'm not interested in what someone is against until they've said what they're for, which makes Mencius Moldbug a great deal less interesting for me than he would be if he wrote more on what he would replace the Modern Structure with than on how vile it is.

The rule of impro, that "No" is always a bad move, and all good moves have the form "Yes, And", can be applied to every area of life.

If you truly wish to know why, then post your question on reddit. Ask the hateful, cynical people why they are that way.

Some (weak) evidence that pessimists tend to be more accurate (and hence communities that value truth highly would tend to have more pessimistic people):

Pessimists are often right

Research shows that relative pessimists are more accurate at gauging success and failure rates at a simple laboratory task than optimists, who undercounted failures and overcounted successes, says Edward Chang, associate professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. Also, evidence shows that pessimism can be highly motivational, as what's called "defensive pessimism" drives people to achieve their goals.

Relatedly, I'm also struck by how unpleasant and nasty people can be in some places -- often without actually violating any forum rules or other taboos, but just by such behaviors as aggressively denying status to others and being logically rude in the extreme.

Similarly to NancyLebovitz, I'd strongly question the assumption that reddit even is negative. Can you provide any good examples of this? Are you sure you don't just confuse disagreement or unexpected levels of directness with actual rudeness and pessimism?

Personally, I think reddit is one of the most friendly places I hang out on. The only sites that are even nicer and more optimistic are (more or less) rational learning communities, but that's really selection bias. Cynical pessimists don't tend to tackle hard problems.

This is the default that happens with online communities. LW is the exception, not the rule. I can think of many possible reasons why we got lucky, but cannot test them.

Negativity can be cathartic for people who feel helpless.

I guess for the topic of this forum, I should ask whether you were objectively looking for forum attitudes either way, or whether you set out to seek negativity and, with confirmation bias, found it?

I've noticed this general pattern on the internet generally. My guess is that being optimistic makes you vulnerable to mockery. Most people won't openly mock you in real life, but with anonymity on the internet, mocking is extremely common.

The most optimistic places on the Internet are also the ones with norms of niceness. Especially places where niceness is vigorously enforced by moderators. The nicest/most optimistic comments section I can think of is on this guy's high-traffic blog..

It's not paranoia when they really are out to get you.

"News is what someone somewhere wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising."

--Lord Northcliffe, publisher of The Daily Mail

For negative things here, perhaps see: Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear

Another important idea in the area is: The smoke detector principle. Natural selection and the regulation of defensive responses.

See also: Why Comments Snark

Here's a wild guess:

• For evolutionary reasons, for most people it's easier to trigger a negative emotion than a positive one. So, regardless of their situation, the average person is suffering much of the time, and is either resigned or angry about it.
• Questions like "What does it benefit anything if I am miserable about suffering?" are meaningless to the average person. Emotions are reality.
• Unlike real life middle-class Western culture, the reddit community doesn't give any particular status credit for being upbeat, so the usual motivation for not acting negative all the time is gone.

I'm sure that part of it is because there's an awful lot of things in this world to be negative about.