DoppleFlopper

How do I replicate your life, but in the pants I bought from Macy's?

Is there data to back this up? If yes, what do you think of the results?

Not OP, but I think there is research to somewhat support this, though I do believe it's up for a lot of speculation and interpretation.

The increase you perceive is most likely due to an increase in users, which exacerbates the following features of Reddit:

• ^{What often aligns with authenticity, especially in the realm of online communities, is the courage to be bold, offbeat, and funny. These are some of the characteristics that online community users most appreciate, overindexing among most of them.}

• ^{people are inclined to share things they wouldn’t normally when they’re anonymous (66%), are more honest online when they can be anonymous (60%), and are inclined to post positive/inspirational things when anonymous (36%)}

• ^{Compared to social media platforms, online community site's conversations were regarded as more meaningful, its atmosphere judged more respectful, and users felt more able to be themselves and respected by others in turn}

My opinion of this information is that Reddit, by design, is meant to pose communities in ways which typically cause users to overvalue environments (IE to take information or moderation more seriously than what's commonly appropriate for the forum), which can result in many different conflicts in behavior and interpreting information.

In relation to behavior, users are also incentivized to not only be more honest-- but to behave in more abnormal ways than they usually would-- which likely accounts for much confusion and miscommunication on both parts of those who are writing and reading.

Culminating with this is what is primarily considered 'authentic' in terms of communicating online. Not only are people incentivized to be more honest and abnormal -- but most users are incentivized to purposefully act bold, offbeat, or funny as to appear more genuine.

I think the results of this design mixed with clearly conflicting behaviors and incentives, in addition to a growth in users over the years, has effectively created a dysfunctional community by all accounts. This is not to say that all, or even a majority of replies are as you described in every place throughout Reddit; but it does implicate that there is greater potential for the behaviors you described to exist at any moment in time on the platform, especially as more users are inclined to conform to the mentioned incentives and behaviors. That's just my opinion though.

Are you Jewish? Why Israel? How do I get there without being haggled by everyone and possibly shot? Have your feelings changed about the situation there since joining?

That explains why you're so damn saucy, and why all my pants are skirts. Would McDonalds be cool? I hear the BigMac makes you look bigger.

My addition would be that the medium doesnt lend itself to subtlety

Totally agree and I've absolutely been on both ends myself. Reddit definitely doesn't feel designed to promote subtleties in communication lol.

Part of that I think is incumbent on how age demographics are designed to disperse on Reddit. Since there's no real terms of separation beyond certain subreddits, it's kind of a shit show in discourse for all ages that want to participate. Some people might not understand certain subtleties, let alone want them, especially if it amounts to different types of effort. I also agree about the arguing website, Reddit is a great concoction that enables arguing for no real reason.

Here's a partially anecdotal paragraph from a research study to try and predict user age via comments which I thought shared some interesting results:

They [the adolescent age group] also tend to post in subreddits with more subscribers when compared with the older age group. This may be an indication that popular subreddits are popular because they contain many adolescent users, given that the general Reddit user base is skewed young [49]. The adolescent age group tended to have shorter comments than the adult age group. Younger users also tend to have a higher proportion of comments posted in a thread they started. In terms of account characteristics, the adolescent age group tended to have user accounts that were created more recently and also had lower comment karma.