Why I’m Quitting Reddit: Re: Reasons/Reflections/Resolutions

Of all the things I’ve seen on Reddit, a website that brings user submitted links and text posts into one place and democratically puts them into the spotlight, this submission finally did it to me.

It was called:  How I came to work at the Wendys. 

Link Here! Click me to understand wtf I'm talking about. 

 It was a short story in comic form (as in picture/text for narrator in a box/dialogue in bubbles, not comic as in haha).

It concerned a man and a woman (I interrupted it as his girlfriend, Reddit saw it as his wife) and their struggles to maintain financial well being.  The man is unemployed, the woman is employed.  She, they, need him to find a job.  He is, to my mind, like a child at the beginning, still seeing the world outside of his immediate priorities with wonder and hope and still developing fantastic dreams.

But the world is a world of immediate priorities.  Those who sit and watch the other people on the bus with fascination, plugged into their surroundings unhindered by headphones or a smart phone, these are the ones who can see the things around them as something worth seeing.  These are the people who realize that all of life is worth living, not just small chunks of it.

These people watch as other people sit and stew in a world of their own making, as far separated from their experience as possible.  These are the successful people.  These are those who make rent and work.  These are the work horses of society.  The kind of people we need.  They will abhor their trip to and from work.  They will, once home, lose themselves in the most immediately pleasing entertainment possible.  They will live the easiest life their income allows.  

This comic is about the transformation from the first to the second.

You can read it yourself, but I’ll sum it up quickly so I can move on.  His wife pressures him to find a job.  He begins writing letters/résumés/applications to various places.  They are all rather ridiculous, first applying to the zoo for the position of walrus, then to the bus system for the job of watching for beautiful moments on the commute, then to a bar to be their cranky old man regretting his past and sharing his bitter pain with those younger, then to the naval yard(?) to be a foghorn.  

All unrealistic jobs obviously, but you can take them as interesting suggestions to spice up the comic, and placeholders for jobs that one might actually be interested in but cannot, due to experience/education/lack of connections, get hired for.

His wife leaves him and he knows it truly is over for him, this life style, his dreaming, his noticing of women crying on the train and will just be him crying on the train from now on.  He begins to work at a Wendy’s after writing a letter to them saying he gives up.  In return he is given the uniform and hat.  We are left seeing him eating breakfast alone with the words God damn it. 

 Then on the train.  God damn it. 

Then alone in bed.  God damn it.


(particularly striking on a second read through is that in this last panel of him in his bed alone, after getting the job, for the first time his notepad is missing)

The reason I go to Reddit isn’t for the user submitted content though, not really anyway.  The reason I go to Reddit is for the user comments on the submitted content.  Often for articles they are more informative than the actual article.  Or they are just funny.  In this case they were more depressing than the already depressing comic.

Most of them (at least the ones I read, which were the most popular) were jokes that missed the point:

Yeah, I’ll fucking apply to be a walrus.  That will make my wife stay with me.

Or arguments against the protagonists actions:

Maybe if he'd gotten the job at Wendy's first before dicking around and writing stupid letters for fictional job postings, his wife might still be there and he might still be happy.

Reply: 

I think that’s the point - be true to yourself from the beginning and swallow your pride

Reply to the reply:

Er, no. I think the point is that you can't live out your dreams and you have to work at fucking Wendys

I err to the third point.  But the first point is missing the mark as many do when dealing with fiction that seems to be, well, self serving isn’t quite the word but, well, just whiny.  The protagonist should have done this, or that, the pragmatic reader says in the comment section.  Well, yeah, I guess he should have, but then there is no story, is there?  And the story is rarely actually about whether the actions one takes are right or wrong or pragmatic, but what the actions mean in their context.

I think the problem with Reddit regarding fiction is that if it is in first person, the OP becomes a real person or the original poster, and advice is needed instead of seeing what is really being said.  

The rest of the posts dealt with the feasibility of getting a degree in English, and comments ridiculing those who would get a degree they want as opposed to one that is “in demand”.  The argument fell between commenters belonging to the two groups I mentioned before.  Those they felt as if life was to be enjoyed, and those who felt as though while it would be nice to enjoy life, one must become a man and put away childish things and make the money.

I don’t know but I’m done.  I’m not going to spend time predictably mourning the past glory of reddit nor ranting on the decline of quality since the death of Digg (a similar site that was once more popular than reddit) and the influx of millions of users.  Those claims were already being made before I started reading reddit years ago.

The main point being:  I’m done (for now).  I woke up at 0130 feeling terrible and I still do.  I saw the comic and the comments and I made my choice.  The important thing will be filling the giant time sink reddit was with something worthwhile.  Something to defeat the comments that depressed me on reddit.  Something to defeat my own doubts.  Something to change the trajectory of my life.

I’ve already quit one habit recently, one considerably harder to quit, and now it is time for this one to fall as well, if I am ever to become the person I want to become.

So I quit you reddit.  I’m done.  I won’t base my thoughts around your ‘hivemind’, I won’t even think of it.  I’m just done and I’ll feel free soon.

Now I am going to try to return to sleep after my hour and half reprieve from it.  I know this means there is a greater likelihood of me having lucid dreams.  Lucid dreams where I realize I’m in a dream and I can do anything.

Where I realize I can do anything. 

Goodnight.
GBottom of Form