I can see that Reddit really hurt you. On behalf of the community, I'm sorry.

> It just means they need a different type of marketing.

That's correct. And Step #1 is to have a product which will make it past the collective bullshit detector. Step #2 is to provide real and actual value. To have a legitimately good product.

So much of marketing is built on deception. If you try to deceive Redditors, you're going to get told to fk urself.

People who can't complete step 1 or 2 and want to employ deception-based marketing often tell a tail like yours. It's our fault for not just taking what you tell us at face value and handing over our money.

However all of the people appending 'Reddit' to their search queries instead of reading the deception-based marketing pages that fill up Google results, may understand where I'm coming from.

You have way too much faith in reddit and it’s given you a huge blind spot.

It’s trivial for companies to get past Reddit’s “bullshit detector”. Just sound like a scrappy small business that cares deeply about users and not money.

There is a trail of overfunded kickstarters with nothing to show years later that demonstrates how gullible redditors are.

Your overconfidence in a bunch of armchair experts is exactly why they are so gullible. Being susceptible to marketing is one thing. Thinking you’re not is so much worse.

> I can see that Reddit really hurt you. On behalf of the community, I'm sorry.

You don’t speak for the community of which I’m a part. They also didn’t hurt me, they hurt the people they doxxed and I watched it happen years ago. That’s why there are strict doxxing bans now.

Redditors as a collective are as dumb as the average population (everyone gets equal votes), which doesn’t make for a good SNR.

> However all of the people appending 'Reddit' to their search queries instead of reading the deception-based marketing pages that fill up Google results, may understand where I'm coming from.

I do this too, but what you’re failing to grasp is that you don’t realize you’re also reading deception-based marketing pages. Corporations wised up to social media a decade ago and have armies of social media experts that know exactly how to target various online communities.

I've been a reddit user for a number of years, and while there are indeed some good subreddits, by and large my experience lines up with kortilla's.

I think the problem is that we're talking about "reddit" like it's one group of people who have the same characteristic responses to things across time. But the whole point of reddit is for there to be disparate communities who may or may not communicate with each other and may or may not share or hold diametrically opposing views on any topic that can be written in words.

When submitting to reddit, you elplicitely cannot submit just to "reddit", you have to choose a subreddit. These subreddit can be as varied in response as humans can, even when apparently sharing the same topic/goal. Subreddits turn toxic sometimes, sometimes they're made that way intentionally. Some are hard fought places of positive intent with strong moderation and some are 'wild west'. Sometimes places get toxic enough that someone else creates a similarly named subreddit with an identical goal but attempts to cultivate and moderate a positive environment. If you didn't know about this you'd see 2 identical subreddits, when you post you'll get 2 very different receptions.

"Reddit"s response is entirely dependent upon subreddit. We cannot argue about how "reddit" reacts, and it's impractical to talk about individual redditors, the communities within, the subreddits, are the unit about which we can have meaningful conversation. There's no point in arguing about whether reddit has hurt someone or not or whether their reception was beneficial or degrading the community without knowing _which_ Community. There are places that will hurt everyone, there are places that will reject every product, there are places that won't. They are different places

> These subreddit can be as varied in response as humans can

I've never been anywhere on Reddit that doesn't have the specific characteristic that I'm referring to. If people think you are wrong, they tell you. If they think you're lying or spinning bullshit, they say so. If they think your method is suboptimal, they let you know the way they think is best.

This also applies to people on HN. We're engaged in it right now.

> Lol, that’s not at all what the culture is good at. It’s an internet mob with famous examples of false accusations, doxxing and harassment.

You're both wrong :). There is no "Reddit culture"; on Reddit, culture is scoped to a subreddit. You and GP are likely hanging out on different kinds of subreddits - but if your experience is that of "an internet mob with famous examples of false accusations, doxxing and harassment", I strongly suggest you rethink which subreddits you follow. Yes, they probably need a different type of marketing, but they're probably also not worth it for technical products.

> Being cynical and anti-business is not about “getting to the facts”.

It's hard to tell, because cynicism and healthy realism overlap nearly 100% when it comes to modern business.

Oh I’m aware different subreddits have different cultures, but doxxing and mob behavior emerge from any large enough online anonymous crowd. Humans at scale are petty and vindictive. HN even has to have rules about it because it’s been a problem here even when the site was much smaller.

Any particular subreddit will have a specific ideological soft spot that a dedicated marketer will be able to identify and craft turf to exploit. It’s a fundamental flaw to anonymity.

> There is no "Reddit culture"; on Reddit, culture is scoped to a subreddit.

There is both.

For example, anonymity. There is nothing stopping people from using their real name as their username or openly revealing who they are, where they live and work etc. But the Reddit culture is to be anonymous.

Are there exceptions? Yes. But those exceptions don't change that it's an anonymous culture.