Please help me find replacements for these subreddits
September 9, 2014 9:24 AM Subscribe
I think it's about time I unplugged myself from Reddit. But where will I get my hobby news/content/funny pictures? I'd like suggestions for replacements for my current subs that: (A) have variable time investment possible, (B) have decent, rotato (or at least not disgusting) comment communities, and (C) where the communication is focused around the topic (e.g. comments on a post) as opposed to the user (e.g. reposting to your personal profile). List of topics inside!
My subs that I really need replacements for:
- AskHistory (history experts answer questions)
- ASOIAF (discussion, theories, jokes about game of thrones)
- DataIsBeautiful (cool graphs, charts, visualizations etc., non-specific to topic)
- FanTheories (rampant speculation about fictional plotlines)
- FemaleFashionAdvice
- Food (pictures and recipes of random stuff)
- FrugalMaleFashion (good deals on good clothes)
- Kzoo (news and conversation about Kalamazoo, Michigan)
- Michigan (news and conversation about michigan)
- MaleFashionAdvice (advice and discussion about casual and business casual male fashion)
- WickedEdge (wet shaving)
- RPG (discussion about any and all table-top Role Playing Games)
- /r/all (including this because I also like to buzz through the All Subreddits page to waste 30 minutes experiencing the zeitguest of memes, gripes, jokes, news, and etc.)
My subs that I really need replacements for:
- AskHistory (history experts answer questions)
- ASOIAF (discussion, theories, jokes about game of thrones)
- DataIsBeautiful (cool graphs, charts, visualizations etc., non-specific to topic)
- FanTheories (rampant speculation about fictional plotlines)
- FemaleFashionAdvice
- Food (pictures and recipes of random stuff)
- FrugalMaleFashion (good deals on good clothes)
- Kzoo (news and conversation about Kalamazoo, Michigan)
- Michigan (news and conversation about michigan)
- MaleFashionAdvice (advice and discussion about casual and business casual male fashion)
- WickedEdge (wet shaving)
- RPG (discussion about any and all table-top Role Playing Games)
- /r/all (including this because I also like to buzz through the All Subreddits page to waste 30 minutes experiencing the zeitguest of memes, gripes, jokes, news, and etc.)
You'll find some links to data visualization stuff here: best blogs about data. Quora itself is good too, and might hit some of your other topics.
Something Awful has a fashion subforum.
posted by the big lizard at 9:42 AM on September 9, 2014 [2 favorites]
Something Awful has a fashion subforum.
posted by the big lizard at 9:42 AM on September 9, 2014 [2 favorites]
grouse: It's a bit long, but I always refer people to this post by Herr Doktor when asked about Rotato: http://metatalk.metafilter.com/21080/WTF-is-a-rotato#935074
posted by Leth at 9:48 AM on September 9, 2014
posted by Leth at 9:48 AM on September 9, 2014
Best answer: I'm going to assume you've already considered and rejected using Reddit Enhancement Suite's powerful filtering tools (you can filter anything tagged NSFW easily, and with some tinkering can make the filters a lot more sophisticated) to insulate yourself from the ickiness of Reddit.
For history discussion (or any social science) you could explore the history-focused H-Net lists- they're explicitly directed at academics and can be hard to parse sometimes, but certainly a decent level of discourse there.
r/ASOIAF - Check out the exhaustive chapter-by-chapter historical/political/sociological/literary analysis at Race for the Iron Throne and don't forget to check out the blogroll at the bottom of that site for other great GoT sites.
r/dataisbeautiful replacement: Information is beautiful
r/FanTheories replacement: http://www.overthinkingit.com/
Mens fashion - Try http://putthison.com/ and don't forget to check out both the videos and the list of "Sites we like" a bit down the right side. Mefi favorite Jesse Thorn is a contributor to this.
I'm not a huge RPG person, but isn't http://forum.rpg.net/ still a pretty big community? You could also explore the RPG forums at Rich Burlew's Order of the Stick site.
As a substitute for r/all there's still old Fark.com, though fark of course suffers from many of the same civility problems that plague reddit.
When it comes to food and women's fashion I got nothing, but I suspect there are huge communities about both of those topics on both Tumblr and YouTube (areas of the social web I am less familiar with).
posted by Wretch729 at 10:10 AM on September 9, 2014 [4 favorites]
For history discussion (or any social science) you could explore the history-focused H-Net lists- they're explicitly directed at academics and can be hard to parse sometimes, but certainly a decent level of discourse there.
r/ASOIAF - Check out the exhaustive chapter-by-chapter historical/political/sociological/literary analysis at Race for the Iron Throne and don't forget to check out the blogroll at the bottom of that site for other great GoT sites.
r/dataisbeautiful replacement: Information is beautiful
r/FanTheories replacement: http://www.overthinkingit.com/
Mens fashion - Try http://putthison.com/ and don't forget to check out both the videos and the list of "Sites we like" a bit down the right side. Mefi favorite Jesse Thorn is a contributor to this.
I'm not a huge RPG person, but isn't http://forum.rpg.net/ still a pretty big community? You could also explore the RPG forums at Rich Burlew's Order of the Stick site.
As a substitute for r/all there's still old Fark.com, though fark of course suffers from many of the same civility problems that plague reddit.
When it comes to food and women's fashion I got nothing, but I suspect there are huge communities about both of those topics on both Tumblr and YouTube (areas of the social web I am less familiar with).
posted by Wretch729 at 10:10 AM on September 9, 2014 [4 favorites]
Oh and credit goes to wonderful mefite ocherdraco for introducing me to the Race for the Iron Throne blog/book. Which I mention only because it occurs to me that another good substitute for the "discovering cool stuff" function of Reddit is to attend IRL meetups and meet interesting people who know about cool stuff!
posted by Wretch729 at 10:15 AM on September 9, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Wretch729 at 10:15 AM on September 9, 2014 [1 favorite]
Food: Tasteologie! Pretty much nothin' but photos and recipe links. Secondarily, kitchn and Chow (though I also like the discussion boards at Chowhound).
posted by wintersweet at 10:18 AM on September 9, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by wintersweet at 10:18 AM on September 9, 2014 [1 favorite]
If you want funny pictures, go to the host: Imgur! Want the /r/funny without all those redditors? Go to imgur.com/r/funny. Need memes? imgur.com/r/adviceanimals. Need that perfect reaction gif? imgur.com/r/reactiongifs. I HERD U LIK DataIsBeautiful: imgur.com/r/dataisbeautiful
The main page is a compendium of most popular images based on voting in imgur, or most viral (i.e. most loaded, and therefore dictated primarily by reddit traffic but also by any other site that links to pics hosted by imgur), or newest. You should also venture now and then into user-submitted, images uploaded by Imgur users and submitted for public view.
(Submitting for public view in the UserSub gallery is not automatic; those who don't desire autopublication will be happy, but you get the occasional person who didn't know about this and wondered why they never got votes.)
Comments are length-restricted, and while I don't usually read too deep into them, it's apparent that many people find community there. (login to comment and vote, natch)
Best part: Keyboard navigation!
posted by Sunburnt at 10:28 AM on September 9, 2014 [3 favorites]
The main page is a compendium of most popular images based on voting in imgur, or most viral (i.e. most loaded, and therefore dictated primarily by reddit traffic but also by any other site that links to pics hosted by imgur), or newest. You should also venture now and then into user-submitted, images uploaded by Imgur users and submitted for public view.
(Submitting for public view in the UserSub gallery is not automatic; those who don't desire autopublication will be happy, but you get the occasional person who didn't know about this and wondered why they never got votes.)
Comments are length-restricted, and while I don't usually read too deep into them, it's apparent that many people find community there. (login to comment and vote, natch)
Best part: Keyboard navigation!
posted by Sunburnt at 10:28 AM on September 9, 2014 [3 favorites]
Grouse, "rotato" is a term created and propagated over at mefi-universe site MeFightClub to refer to a general attitude that I'd sum up as "don't be an unpleasant human being."
posted by Alterscape at 10:42 AM on September 9, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by Alterscape at 10:42 AM on September 9, 2014 [4 favorites]
For wet shaving, Badger and Blade is the biggest and oldest forum.
posted by cazoo at 11:14 AM on September 9, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by cazoo at 11:14 AM on September 9, 2014 [1 favorite]
The Dappered.com forums are a good (better?) substitute for /r/frugalmalefashion. They might also be somewhat a substitute for /r/MaleFashionAdvice.
posted by cnc at 1:02 PM on September 9, 2014
posted by cnc at 1:02 PM on September 9, 2014
styleforum.net and supertalk.superfuture.com to substitute some aspects of /r/malefashionadvice.
posted by sockpuppetdirect at 3:02 PM on September 9, 2014
posted by sockpuppetdirect at 3:02 PM on September 9, 2014
Some ideas, just bouncing around...
You used to really like chat rooms. You might find a lot of enjoyment of chat rooms that align with your interests. Maybe mefi has a chat room for video games?
Al Jazeera is known to be pretty professional and impartial as far as news goes. You could spend some time reading one article from each section on the USA site.
Specific Subreddit comments:
Askhistory: There is no replacing this sub anywhere on the internet. Just super high quality, I think because real historians are bad at asking interesting questions. However, you could just read history books, or watch some exciting history youtube channel!
ASOIAF I honestly don't enjoy this subreddit much anyway. Maybe a chat room or something. I don't think you'll find anything better as far as community for this.
Dataisbeautiful Use the imgur site.
Fantheories I think fanfiction might be a solution for this. They have some form of big community that really help each other write and develop ideas. I don't know where that community lives though.
FFA/Food/FMFA Use the imgur sites. You probably hate the comments for these anyway.
Kalamazoo doesn't have a community like the subreddit anywhere else, without joining some big real life club. You hate those.
Michigan NPR probably.
wickededge I've never really understood a continued interest in this. Maybe you can find a cook barbers forum or something, but once you are in a routine, I feel like you can stop worrying about this. Just like fitness/buildapc. Once you get what you need, you can leave.
RPG There have got to be hundreds of forums and chat rooms for this. Maybe post a question on /r/rpg and see where other people go.
/r/all Fark is a good idea. Or just top images on imgur. I think you should stay connected with /r/all just you can keep your finger on the pulse of the world.
You could always make a new account and only like these subs, you are probably subscribed to other subs that you are much less interested in, that are filling up your news feed. I know I am.
posted by bbqturtle at 8:31 AM on September 10, 2014 [1 favorite]
You used to really like chat rooms. You might find a lot of enjoyment of chat rooms that align with your interests. Maybe mefi has a chat room for video games?
Al Jazeera is known to be pretty professional and impartial as far as news goes. You could spend some time reading one article from each section on the USA site.
Specific Subreddit comments:
Askhistory: There is no replacing this sub anywhere on the internet. Just super high quality, I think because real historians are bad at asking interesting questions. However, you could just read history books, or watch some exciting history youtube channel!
ASOIAF I honestly don't enjoy this subreddit much anyway. Maybe a chat room or something. I don't think you'll find anything better as far as community for this.
Dataisbeautiful Use the imgur site.
Fantheories I think fanfiction might be a solution for this. They have some form of big community that really help each other write and develop ideas. I don't know where that community lives though.
FFA/Food/FMFA Use the imgur sites. You probably hate the comments for these anyway.
Kalamazoo doesn't have a community like the subreddit anywhere else, without joining some big real life club. You hate those.
Michigan NPR probably.
wickededge I've never really understood a continued interest in this. Maybe you can find a cook barbers forum or something, but once you are in a routine, I feel like you can stop worrying about this. Just like fitness/buildapc. Once you get what you need, you can leave.
RPG There have got to be hundreds of forums and chat rooms for this. Maybe post a question on /r/rpg and see where other people go.
/r/all Fark is a good idea. Or just top images on imgur. I think you should stay connected with /r/all just you can keep your finger on the pulse of the world.
You could always make a new account and only like these subs, you are probably subscribed to other subs that you are much less interested in, that are filling up your news feed. I know I am.
posted by bbqturtle at 8:31 AM on September 10, 2014 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
For the Game of Thrones TV series, there's always MetaFilter FanFare.
There's a History StackExchange.
posted by grouse at 9:30 AM on September 9, 2014