The Reddit Version Of Twitter’s Fail Whale (Sort Of)

I learned something today about one of my favorite social media sites, reddit. If you like to laugh, and if you haven’t visited reddit, I highly recommend it. The funniest most random stuff you’ve ever seen somehow always ends up on that site. However, just like veteran Twitter and Digg users, reddit users have a style all their own. I don’t participate much in the conversations yet since I’m still learning about the community, but I’m on that site almost everyday, and I tweet content from there often.

Two days ago the most creative little iPhone fail whale image posted on reddit. It immediately went viral and accrued over 32,000 “up votes” (reddit’s version of “likes“). Then suddenly something went wrong. Out of seemingly nowhere, the reddit community began rejecting this post and “down votes” started pouring in. At the time I’m writing this, it currently has 29,534 down votes. The image is brilliant, and it didn’t change. So why did the community get soured?

I learned today on Uproxx that it happened because that image got so many comments saying “this is cute,” “you are funny” and other somewhat meaningless comments that witty reddit users considered so clever-less and stupid that they responded with an immediate, “We change our minds, we’re outta here,” by suddenly down voting. It doesn’t really matter that the content was good because on that site, so much weight is put into the comments. Note to self: reddit users don’t like stupid shit. I’ll try to remember that.

The first picture below is the original reddit image of the iPhone fail whale. Love it! Below that are a few other pictures that reddit users created after being inspired by the original. You can view the complete collection of 28 pictures in the slideshow on Uproxx.

Via: [Geekolinks on Geekosystem]