you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 36 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I feel like down votes/up votes aren't, or weren't, supposed to be the focus here. Heck, on Voyager, I hide the vote numbers. Why are fake Internet points so important to people??

But yeah, dude didn't even consider that maybe it's them that fucked up. Just doubled down and noped out to preserve their ego.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 14 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    The votes represent, in some sense, a social consensus, and consensus actually does matter quite a lot to people.

    If you ever see people arguing about which movie is objectively better than some other, that's what they're doing. They're fighting for social capital.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Seeing the social consensus can be legitimately useful in many situations outside subjective opinion though. YouTube dislikes are the classic example. They were a very reliable way to know when a tutorial was not worth your time.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • Oh yeah, I don't hide them. Votes even on reddit can be a useful temperature check for audience engagement.

    I do think it's funny when people whine about getting downvotes, though; it betrays just a little bit of discomfort with whatever else they're saying.

  • source
  • parent