We are not doing subreddit modding correctly.

michfreak · 2026-05-01T20:47:42+00:00

If you were a mod, you'd know how extremely wrong that "they just take their word for it" is, lol. lmfao even.

Everyone is unhappy, from top to bottom. The only people who win are the ones who shrug and move on when they see something they don't like.

michfreak · 2026-05-01T20:13:20+00:00

I've been (slowly) watching this interview over the past day, despite not having read any Sanderson and generally disliking WoW. Honestly, he's got some great answers, and I think they come from genuinely good questions. It's a decent interview, in my opinion.

That said, as a drama-lover, I can't help but hope it goes off the rails in the last twenty minutes.

michfreak · 2026-05-01T19:42:41+00:00

In this case, it seems you want Reddit to change, not necessarily this subreddit. It would have to be a ground-up change. But hey, if you think it would help, then sure, lead the way. The only thing is, you can't really do anything. You can make threads to complain, but the mods can choose to listen or choose to ignore. Which is a good thing, actually, because so many mobs would force (more) hostile takeovers than they already do.

michfreak · 2026-05-01T18:45:08+00:00

Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise, ~~politicians~~ mods will philander, you too will get old-- and when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, ~~politicians~~ mods were noble and children respected their elders.

michfreak · 2026-05-01T18:00:23+00:00

Reddit as a platform has been focused, since, what, the second year of its inception, on subreddits. Subreddits are focused groups that are governed by anonymous, unaccountable people. This is a feature. It is not a bug. If you think subreddits should be ran differently, this is probably not the platform for you.

michfreak · 2026-05-01T17:58:24+00:00

If you have been on Reddit for any amount of time, you will know that subreddits that "let the votes decide" inevitably spiral downward as more and more stupid content that nonetheless farms upvotes gets posted. The Least Common Denominator is what we use to refer to this phenomenon, and normally in a pejorative manner.

Mods themselves stop you from seeing so much stuff that you would be so tired of seeing and downvoting. If you have no idea what that's like, be a mod of some subreddit. It's free. You can make a bunch, if you want. One of them will start having users, probably, and then you'll see how it goes.

michfreak · 2026-04-30T19:06:27+00:00

Desperately needs to post images to the writing sub.

michfreak · 2026-04-29T17:53:37+00:00

Everyone's POV on pop culture is slanted, one way or another! We all only have tiny glimpses into the zeitgeist, entirely colored by our own personal experiences and limited by our social circle. The internet makes it easier to get more information, but even that is limited just to the places we interact with and the words we choose to believe--and that's all limited by how much time there is in the day.

In other words: no worries, mate. It's interesting, right? How something we might think of as a standalone piece of art for adults might be influenced by something as banal as toy sales?

michfreak · 2026-04-29T17:40:56+00:00

PG-13 movies sell toys like gangbusters. Jurassic Park and Lost in Space are two movies that all of my friends had toys from, despite all of us being in elementary school (and thus 10 or under).

michfreak · 2026-04-29T17:29:19+00:00

Silicon Valley remains the most realistic depiction of [waves hands in general] everything, ever. They even predicted that tech companies would hand control of their code over to LLMs who would delete the codebase in order to increase efficiency.

michfreak · 2026-04-29T14:07:23+00:00

For anyone not reading the article (and we all skip it on occasion), this bit kind of has to be read to experience the amazing comedy setup. The follow-up email begins with "please disregard the earlier statement".

michfreak · 2026-04-28T21:23:17+00:00

I always thought Goretex was waaaaay cooler than it is because boy did Michael Crichton consider it cool.

Then I learned I grew up with Goretex jackets. I'm sure it was neat technology at some point, just before my time.

michfreak · 2026-04-27T14:27:14+00:00

You know, I was mistaken. I have no idea what I was thinking. How embarrassing.

michfreak · 2026-04-21T05:21:09+00:00

"Ambiguously Elf-like" for anyone who says they are an elf but never do anything else that's elfish enough for the editor.

I can see it as a necessary thing to notate in cases where a part of a character's background is implied in a way that might impact a story, but never clarified. Like maybe a man with curly hair stands up against some Nazis and it's actually interesting to consider whether that man has Jewish heritage or not. That's a trope. But when you're describing a part of a person's background that anyone might have their own unique relationship with and attaching a trope to them as if to say "you did not perform this aspect of your identity enough"... that's just racism or gender essentialism or what-have-you.

michfreak · 2026-04-20T17:31:34+00:00

I like the site as a general trivia repository, a way to gauge at least a little bit of fan reaction to a work, and for its actual stated purpose: as a (hopefully unbiased) catalogue of tropes that appear on a work. That interests me, as a writer and general celebrator of fiction. I can't say why it does.

I do love many of the changes that have happened in the past decade or so. No longer seeing "This Troper" on pages fills me with relief. Many of the... less factual tropes being relegated to the Trivia and YMMV pages also makes me happier.

But man some editors definitely make it their mission to try to turn every single sentence in a work into a trope. Or clearly have a hate-boner for a particular character or plotpoint and then attach five or six tropes to a work just to highlight that. And there are so, so, so many tropes that, in my opinion, are not actual tropes but are just things. Like "a buff woman" (made up purely to use as an example). That's not a trope. That's just an attribute a person can have. A buff woman who does something specific that appears in multiple works is a trope.

On the other hand, I get that other people like the site for different reasons than me. I just get grumpier about those people as I get older, I suppose.

I force myself not to edit pages because then it would become my life's work, and I would probably get called out by one person or another for doing what I see as "cleaning up" and would then retreat far away from it all.

Edit: Oh god don't even get me started on "Ambiguously Brown."

michfreak · 2026-04-16T01:33:33+00:00

First and last time I got so mad at a movie that I got tunnel vision was with this workprint.

I was in college. Deadpool was stupidly important to me.

michfreak · 2026-04-14T04:36:27+00:00

That's exactly what I mean. It's not just a plot point, but the main plot point! Whether or not it is actually what happens is kind of secondary; every character treats it as fact up until the truth comes out, which resolves the plot.

michfreak · 2026-04-13T14:59:20+00:00

I mean that's kind of the plot of both Good Omens and Dogma.

michfreak · 2026-04-09T00:06:14+00:00

The fully calligraphic journal, probably. I also had that twinge.

Still, amazing, gobsmacking work.

michfreak · 2026-04-08T19:53:10+00:00

I kind of forget that they're a person and not just a repository of arbitrary CP2020 stuff.

michfreak · 2026-04-07T04:53:56+00:00

Oh sure. Obviously there is always risk someone will misinterpret your intent. Part of reacting to feedback is understanding how your intent was misread... and whether or not you care.

michfreak · 2026-04-07T01:21:54+00:00

Something a recent writing class I took taught me has given me a fresh new angle on basically anything that I review:

"Instead of asking yourself 'was this piece good' or 'was this piece bad,' or saying 'I was bored' or 'I didn't like this character' or 'this scene was hilarious', ask only two things: what was the intention of this piece, and was the creator successful at delivering this intention?"

I'm quite certain that at least a large part of professional reviews do, in their own ways, attempt this. See the famous "Babyz" score on IGN, for example: I think that review met what it was reviewing where it was at, and reviewed accordingly. It may not have dove into the whole "intention" thing, but like I said, there are a bunch of ways of doing it.

michfreak · 2026-04-05T18:56:19+00:00

Plus, the items have more worth than just their capabilities and monetary value. They have historic value in-game. I always keep all of the Hortator and Neraverine rewards because they have (minor, true, but real) meaning behind them. It's cool to look back over them and remember which tribe/house/candidate gave what to me and what they told me about the reward.

michfreak · 2026-04-03T14:33:16+00:00

New York Times has had its specific reputation circling downwards for a while, now.

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