How I Learned To Stop Worrying About Digg And Love Reddit

Get Ready For A Rant, For I'm Really Fed Up

Chances are, most of you did not even realize this (which speaks volumes to me) but I have stopped using digg to promote/share the articles of The Long Take.

My case against it is so simple and clear that it doesn't even make me proud to have discovered that. Recently, I have posted a small announcement titled 'New Poll Open For Cannes vs. Oscars: 1974' where I talked a bit about why 1974 was a momentous year in terms of Cannes vs. Oscars and requested my readers to take 2 seconds to voice their opinions and vote for the film they like better. By the time there were 23 diggs, my poll had only 3 votes.

So how does this happen? After spending approximately five months dealing with the inner dynamics of Digg, I believe I have a simple answer to that question: Unlike popular belief, Digg is actually not a social bookmarking site but a weird network that is populated by lots of self-seeking individuals, who keep 'shouting' you about the articles that they want to make popular and demand, not ask, not request but demand you to digg them (those of you who consider themselves exceptions to this majority, please do not be offended). Your interests are irrelevant, since it's not really important whether you read the article or not - as long as you keep clicking that same magical button, everybody is your friend. As soon as you don't, you are nobody.

Eventually, Digg becomes a place where everyone promotes his/her friends' submissions/shouts, just preserve the right to ask the same from them. Your personal history does not really reflect what you like, what you have found interesting or what you enjoyed; it's more of a record of how meticulous you are about fulfilling your duties.

Needless to say, there might be some people whose experiences with Digg went much better than mine. I will not deny that. After all, it's a huge community and I'm sure there are some people who somehow managed to get into a network suitable for their tastes and purposes. But after all these months, I am really tired of all the digg requests in my e-mail regarding the good places I can put my dick, Thailand honeymoon vacation packages, how to get laid in Red Light Center, shallow and insincere environmentalism, populist political babble; of requests that are not only immature but also shameless when asking me to digg their articles "if I'm not a communist" or "if I'm not a fag".

The worst part is seeing yourself become a part of such community. When I realized I was digging, without reading, every "omg wow!! sooo funny!!!" articles like clockwork, I decided I had enough. My good friend Ibetolis's film reviews were the only things that kept me going, but at the end of the day, it's not hard to realize how big a loss of time and effort Digg actually is. If I wanted my dorky video to become popular I would definitely go for it but Digg is the last place on the internet to look for serious and mature readers for your blog.

Once I lost my faith in the article voting system in general, I also removed the 'Hype It Up' buttons of ShowHype from my blog. I am still an active member there but I have decided to restrict myself from spending excessive amount of time trying to get my articles 'hyped up'.


Approximately when I started discovering the real nature of Digg, a friend of mine suggested me to try reddit, and I did. Not only you get far more traffic redirected to your website (thanks to their new articles section that actually works) people who come in your direction do that in order to read what you have written. Its customization system works much better if you are more like a reader than a writer, and the articles you have submitted, commented or simply liked reflect your own taste as a reader and your own interests. The network of friends, which is a bit harder to get, is much more meaningful when eventually you do. And it's simple design is the cream on top.

Not that I can easily advocate reddit as a perfect example of a social bookmarking site, I am sure it has its flaws which will become clearer as time passes but the primary notion looks appealing for now.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, I'm unfortunately not paid at all by reddit or anyone else and this is not a sponsored review of any sort. I am just fed up with the whole experience of Digg and I wanted to inform any of you who are looking for the very same thing that I do: An intelligent reader base. Apparently, you don't have to dig really deep for that.