But in all seriousness, we would probably ask them what they think about reddit’s working environment and a few questions like that, and then everybody would move along

Pretty much like this:

Yeah, I gave advice on some smaller / niche, topics. I didn’t delete the whole thing, only my most upvoted and/or most recent comments (I went all the way to december 2022, and every comment with more than 20 upvotes). Replaced it all with a link to my kbin.

It was kind of sad reading all the replies that were like “we should put this comment in the FAQ / this is the best comment / this covers everything”. I was very throughout and loved speading what I learned, and it pains me a little that the few times I lurked in those communities since moving to kbin I see lots of unanswered pleads for advice or straight up terrible advice being given… but honestly, I don’t want reddit to benefit for what I spent years researching and gathering resources

Sorry for the long ass answer. I happened to study this for a while.

Paul Ekman had this “theory of basic emotions” that were supposedly universal for humans and had their set of “innate” gestures for each one.
For his original works, he travelled to some secluded communities and registered that the expressions for “happiness / fear / anger / disgust / sadness / surprise” were supposedly shared among human kind.
Why do I say supposedly? Because a lot of Ekman’s theory was disproved (for example, he claimed each emotion had an area of the brain dedicated to it, or at least some unique structure, which fMRI studies are not finding to be true, even if there is a lot we still don’t know on human emotion). There’s also claims that he contamined his data when he went to these secluded communities, and influenced (probably unknowingly) his results to make everyone’s expressions match the ones he expected for each emotion.

So… are there universal expresions of emotion? Not an easy answer. The physical responses more linked to survival probably are (say fight/ flight in response to fear, startle in response to surprise). The more social ones? don’t know, some may be heavily influenced by culture. You would have to make a study on very young, blind babies from different cultures or something of the sort which would not be easy. Also there’s the thing that babies cannot tell you what emotion they are experimenting, even if you can asume some (loud noise and baby is crying probably equals fear, BUT the baby can’t confirm it, which is a methodological problem for some Scientists).

If this interests you, Ledoux has some great approachable work on the “survival circuits” of the brain that explain emotion in a way comparable to animals and linked to their evolutional value.

Anyone working on reddit might benefit from contacting some of the people that used to work on twitter, just so that they are prepared for what’s to come y´know.
I mean spez already said he admires Elon Musk’s directive of twitter, it doesn’t take much to know that its going to turn into a very shitty place to work for if it hasn’t reached that point yet.

I do think protests achieved so much. They made a lot of noise, put spez’s terrible handling of the situation under the spotlight right before IPO.
And honestly, even if spez doesn’t go back on the API pricing (which he probably won’t), having subreddits protesting and fleeing to the fediverse puts the writing on the wall for other shitty platforms (current or to come).
Back when Elon started destroying twitter I did not get how mastodon worked, but I do see myself working around it now I figured out kbin (although Im not on twitter all that much to justify switching right now), can imagine is the case for anyone fleeing to the fediverse.

Thank dude, means a lot. Here’s to hoping everything works out

Sounds like burnout.
Don’t have any advice cause Im not doing so great myself, but maybe set some small goals for yourself that look more achieaveable and enjoyable. Set a few hours to rest and do whatever without needing to feel productive, set some days to go out and do something different, some museum you never visited, or if there is some kind of event in your city like live music or whatever. Some times it will not be your thing, other times you may discover something new you like, at any case it gives you things to talk about and discuss with your SO and peers.

I don’t know what the heck to do with my life.
I should be happy I finished my major but Im not, Ive been depressed and confused ever since.
It seems like most of the “typical career paths” for my profession are not for me and my attempts to do something a bit different are met with really strange looks from my peers, my friends, my family and my coworkers.

Im a very simple person, and used reddit for very specific things. I didn’t even check my notifications, and participated on some not very big communities. Didn’t even browse the main feed, just opened some tabs with the few subs I wanted to check out, got caught up with the new content that day and moved on to the next tab.
I know Im very much not how the average person interacts with the website.

Didn’t even know what a 3rd party app was until the protests (never used reddit on my phone to limit the amount of time spent there, and was never very tech savvy).
Left because of other reasons, like a couple mods of communities I love packing up and leaving and the sheer principle of it all.

They are probably not gonna get backpay, but what this could achieve is to force reddit’s hand in legally recognizing mod’s work from that point on and giving the mods more standing than they have now.
At the very worst, it sends a message and helps to continue bringing to light reddit’s shitty practices.

Commenting just to say, you are not alone buddy!
A year or so ago I started on a job that was promising but very quickly found it was not what I expected at all, and very soon after started crying and feeling miserable all the time.
I had dreams where I was fired, and I woke up sad that they were just dreams. It was that bad.
It wasn’t that I was exploited or my coworkers were toxic, it was just a very very bad fit for me. Without giving too much detail, I was in that job to help people, but the job had no actual tools or resources to help anyone. So I just had to listen to these terrible stories and take note… and do nothing.
When I quit, instead of another full time job, I came up with a bunch of freelance-ish style of stuff, where I could organice my own day and give myself time to heal ( I know not everyone can do this, but it worked for me). I learned a big lesson on the kinds of jobs I DONT WANT and what Im better off avoiding.
Then decided I wanted to give resources to the people around the country that work in the same position I used to, and through friends and contacts made a course so that people now can have some resources to help.
Your path and what works to get out of this will be unique to you, but don’t be afraid to change it up a bit for some time. I hope it works out for you in the end!

In some communities I was already repeating the same advice over and over again like a parrot.
There was so much traffic and desinformation that the same question would pop up 30 times in an hour.
Since some of the comminities I liked I haven’t been able to find here, I just… created it. And am slowly filling it in with everything I amassed during my reddit time.
People may find it useful or not, and may begin engaging with it or not (hope not, cause I wasn’t born to “mod”) but at least I will have all advice and resources in one spot, neat and tidy. And if anyone needs it, it will be there.

This reminds me, there is a plant that actually looks like bunnies. Ill chose to believe this picture is their origin story