Introduction
The goal of this argumentative essay is to convince the userbase, though the careful use of rhetoric, to refrain from being gay and cringe and actually participate on this site instead of just sitting there and upvoting uninteresting articles like a gay cuck.
Chapter 1: The Problem With Reddit
The congregation of a large number of regular people, such as "normies" onto a certain site will damage any sorting system for posts which relies on popularity. This is evident on Reddit, where most of the userbase is composed of either normies or their beta orbiters. These normie freaks always upvote the most "wholesome" and celebrity-worshipping content, which ruins the based and cool nature of this site. Now, what do I mean by "based"? The term "based" means, when applied to a person, someone who does not care about what others think, and, when applied to a thing, something which enables an activity which most people find to be bad for reasons which have nothing to do with morality. For example, a poor kid who goes on his phone all day and has no friends because everyone hates him for no reason is vilified by the pathetic normies, who act like sheep and orbit whatever new trend is popular. This ruined Reddit and will, if the current posting styles on this site continue, ruin Mainchan as well.
Chapter 2: The Future Of Mainchan
I first learned about Mainchan on a post on a subreddit about Reddit Alternatives. I was immediately attracted(but not in a homosexual manner) to the small, tight-knit, community. But I soon realized that this site, like many other Reddit clones, is doomed to fade into obscurity. While a small userbase does keep things based and cool, most users here do not take any effort to actually post anything interesting or new to contribute to the culture of this site. Now, in many of my prior comments, you may have seen me refer to the "Mainchan culture" and might be confused. Allow me to explain. The main attractor of new users to 4chan was its vulgar and shocking culture. It provided an environment where English speakers could interact with each other anonymously. Mainchan, however, lacks the appeal. Why should new users switch over from other free-speech platforms to Mainchan? The anonymous posting system could provide a convenient way to prevent people from harassing your main account, but the creation of "throwaway accounts" on Reddit is trivial. Furthermore, there is a horrific lack of interesting content that is noticeable as soon as a new user opens the home page. Let me provide a greentext from the perspective of a user who decided to switch over from a Reddit alternative(not saying which because I don't want people to go there instead of posting here):
>be me
>saw cool ad on reddit about a guy named Cicero posting about a site called "mainchan"
>go to mainchan
>Ui looks nice but it looks like another Reddit clone
>scroll down
>articles with no comments
>scroll down more
>more articles with no comments
>scroll down more
>finally a nice post
>create account
>go to s/random
>click on create a post button
>a bunch of rectangular buttons with a furry cat inside of them and options for "text post", "link post"
>close out of mainchan
The above greentext should have provided some rationale for the various scenarios that I am going to make about this site:
>Scenario 1: Bad Ending
By late 2023, after months of inactivity, Cicero looks upon his site one last time. He, with his frontend development skills, has conjured a glorious and beautiful site. But alas, the time has come. Funding problems prevent him from keeping the site open. Cicero tearfully anounces in a post that Mainchan will be permanently shutting down on January 1, 2024.
>Scenario 2: Cuck Ending
Cicero manages to advertise his site on Reddit, attracting a large userbase. However, to his dissapointment, the Reddit simps generate weird content and turn the site into an extension of Reddit. Corporate investors grow interested and purchase the site from Cicero sometime in 2024. Free speech is now banned and strict "Reddiquette"(the name makes me want to kill myself in minecraft) is enforced.
This is the most likely ending if Mainchan manages to become popular since advertisers do not want their brand to be associated with a free-speech site like Mainchand and may pressure Cicero into changing the rules to align more with the "Reddiquette" :(
>Scenario 3: Neutral Endings
>>Scenario 3A: "Good" Neutral Ending
The site does not grow in its userbase, but Cicero has the resources to continue running Mainchan indefinitely. The community remains close and a close bond between all of the users is formed. The site will eventually shut down, but not before memories are made :)
>>Scenario 3B: "Bad Neutral Ending
Much like Scenario 3A, Scenario 3B results in a close friendship between users, but instead of staying on Mainchan, they migrate to Discord and only post here occasionally.
>Scenario 4:Perverted Ending
After several advertising campaigns by Cicero, Mainchan finally attracts users from 4chan. Users begin to post horrific pornogrpahic content, scaring away most normal users who were only looking for conversation. Mainchan eventually turns into an adult-only pornography website, ruining Cicero's chances of being taken seriously ever again.
>Scenario 5: Good Ending
Mainchan's userbase experiences a boom, but does not result in Cicero being pressured by advertisers to ban certain types of content. A unique culture is formed, and users are attracted to the atmosphere of Mainchan.
AggreGAYtion 2 will be posted soon. But for now, good night.
Want to leave a comment?
>I was immediately attracted(but not in a homosexual manner)
LIAR! UR GAY!!!
SHUT UP REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
I SAW YOU THE OTHER DAY WITH THAT "FRIEND" GUY OF YOURS...
THATS FAKE AND GAY SHUT THE FUCK UP REEEEEEEEEE (I have no friends IRL so the joke is on you)
>THATS REAL AND GAY SHUT THE FUCK UP
ftfy
A simple fix would be to post things to specific subs like posting memes on the meme sub not the random sub
Most posts are in their proper place.
You could have posted this in /s/text
You are right. But I think that Cicero should make a crossposting feature so that we can post the same content on multiple subchans without having to copy and paste.
So you want a reddit alternative that is nothing like Reddit?
Me I just want Reddit without the censorship, political bias, and mod abuse, the way the site used to be before they went corpo, anti-user, authoritarian and whatnot. The conversations will come, people are already starting to comment more, including on link/aggregation posts. When we first got started it was about populating the site with content, any content just to get past the "empty restaurant syndrome" phase. I think we're nearing the end of that phase now. There's customers at the tables now, enough that we're starting to talk to each other more.
There's more that is needed though. Cicero needs to implement a few things (making offsite links open in a new tab (SO important), a listing of all subs on the site, auto-linking subs mentioned in comments, showing users their karma in the top bar, live preview under the comment box, adding more spacing between paragraphs so long comments don't look like walls of text, etc.) and we as users need to do our part to comment more. BTW I don't think this whole calling people "normies" thing is very productive. Reeks of tribalism and sets up an "us vs them" dynamic we could do without but hey that's just my opinion.
Anyway, we have a ton of content now that we can start conversations around. I think discoverability is an issue though. I only find new subs by viewing people's profile and realizing they've been posting in subs I've never seen on the home page or on s/all. That's a problem. No way folks are going to comment on posts they never see and can only find by backtracking through user profiles.
In any event I think one part in your greentext example highlights exactly the engagement problem you're lamenting:
>finally a nice post
>create account
>go to s/random
>click on create a post button
This person found a post that interested them, by your implication, a comment post with replies. Then, instead of adding to the conversation in that post, they immediately go to create a new post that may or may not get the same traction as the one that initially caught their eye. Why? Because making a top-level link/aggregation post is usually a whole lot easier than making a text post or a reply comment. For top level link/aggregation posts just find something you think is cool, post the link or image, make a title, hit submit... super easy. Reading through a linked article or user post and coming up with a cogent, relevant reply or coming up with a compelling top level text post often takes time and effort. I mean look at this novel I'm writing here. I've been at this for like a half an hour, it's the second draft because I originally went off on a tangent listing all the crazy fucked-up subs Reddit used to allow in it's wild west days to grow their users.
We do need more subs that encourage text posts. Subs like Reddit's r/askreddit would be helpful here. Right now most of our subs encourage aggregation posts, like few people are going to be making top level text posts in a sub like s/science or s/memes. But an s/askmainchan type sub would encourage conversation. So yeah I guess that's my recommendation, aside from us making efforts to leave more comments, we should start more subs that invite users to converse.
Couldn't agree more, plus sites like Tildes that followed this path of elitism couldn't grow their user base even after 5 years. They still have the same user activity of Mainchan just after 5 months, and guess what, they actually started aggregating content from other sites.
What specifically happened to the site that you mentioned? And I have changed my mind; content aggregation is not fully gay as long as the comment section is active.
Nothing happened it's up and running, but they used to be aggressive towards what they called low quality content. Now most of the site content is articles.