/r/atheism Surpasses 100,000 Users November 20, 2010

/r/atheism Surpasses 100,000 Users

By Guest Contributor
November 20, 2010

This may not mean much to those of you who don’t visit Reddit, but the Atheism subreddit just surpassed 100,000 users 🙂

It’s definitely one of the best places to find amusing/serious/random discussions and links about atheism.

(via Ecstathy)

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  • Ew, really? /r/atheism is the one subreddit I avoid. Most of the content is stuff that’s been reposted a million time, and it’s so misogynistic my head explodes when I try to read any of the comments. Bah 😐

  • Jim [different Jim]

    Ew, really? /r/atheism is the one subreddit I avoid. Most of the content is stuff that’s been reposted a million time, and it’s so misogynistic my head explodes when I try to read any of the comments. Bah

    You mean MORE misogynistic than the Catholic church? More misogynistic than Islam?

  • 100,000? That’s disconcerting. I can’t speak to the misogyny thing, but I can certainly attest to the nastiness and overall mean-spirited, immature nature of many of the commenters and contributors to that subreddit.
    I’m willing to bet that many of those 100,000 are individuals that have registered multiple personae. After many bad experiences with xtian trolls and obnoxious atheists, I avoid that site like the plague.

  • You mean MORE misogynistic than the Catholic church? More misogynistic than Islam?

    Yes, I supposed I should just shut up and accept high amounts of misogyny because it’s worse in other groups *rolls eyes*

  • Jenna

    wow, I’ve never had problems with /r/atheism. it’s one of my favorite places to go. :/

  • jose

    I’ll chet that out. Hopefully there’ll be some new baby recipes.

    Hmmm… atheist cuisine.

  • Best part about reddit are the comments, and the ones in that subreddit are pretty interesting

  • fiddler

    I just do not like reddit or 4chan. They could have 1 million and I still wouldn’t be impressed. Misogynists, racists, and 12 year olds aren’t my favourite groups of online people…

  • Jim [different Jim]

    Yes, I supposed I should just shut up and accept high amounts of misogyny because it’s worse in other groups *rolls eyes*

    Huh? Please quote where I suggested or implied anything of the sort.

  • Ryan

    I just do not like reddit or 4chan. They could have 1 million and I still wouldn’t be impressed. Misogynists, racists, and 12 year olds aren’t my favourite groups of online people…

    Don’t forget the misandry…

    Subreddits that are too heavy on misogyny or misandry are pretty easy to avoid. If they are in reddits I like, it’s usually easy to ignore.

  • Ryan

    Don’t forget the misandry…

    Also, I wanted to note that I am in no way saying the misandry I have in encountered compares to the level of misogyny on reddit (or the world for that matter).

  • Anonymous

    Reddit makes conversations like this possible/widely accesible:

    http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/e9c0m/exmuslim_coming_from_the_core_of_islam/

  • Dekker

    I’m fairly new to the atheism subreddit, but in the time I’ve been there I really haven’t noticed all the racism, misogyny, or other general nastiness that other people are complaining about. No more so than any other free to join online community. Besides, you can always downvote the asshole comments.

  • Carl

    @Jennifurret: Misogyny? Are you reading the /r/atheism of an alternate universe?

  • Vietarmis

    [citation needed]

  • Kev

    Misogynistic how? A couple of links would be nice. I literally can’t think of any instances, tongue not in cheek (as here).

    In general the whole accusation of misogyny on reddit is overblown. The whole /r/MensRights brigade are worth an eyeroll every now and then, but I generally don’t buy it.

  • koroviev

    I’m a regular user of /r/atheism and haven’t noticed anything like misogyny there. The rare times I’ve noticed anything about gender being so discussed were to do with women’s rights in relation to religious misogyny.

    What do you mean Jennifurret?

  • abadidea

    @Jennifurret: Misogyny? I haven’t encountered any on /r/atheism, only on /r/pics… and yes, I am a girl.

  • koroviev

    @Jennifurret: Misogyny? I haven’t encountered any on /r/atheism, only on /r/pics… and yes, I am a girl.

    It’s worth pointing out for non-redditors that each subreddit (/r/whatever) has a unique community with unique opinions and can only be honestly judged with this in mind.

  • J

    @Jennifurret: I am not sure what aspect of not believing in any particular deity would lead to someone being misogynistic. Are you certain that you are not letting a few bad apples convince you that the rest of us are bad? Religious tenets are usually the sort of things that lead to devaluing and disrespecting women. No one in Atheism follows any such doctrine.

  • just

    Yes, there are some misogynists in the Atheism sub-reddit. But to label the entire sub-reddit as misogynistic is completely absurd. It consists of nearly nearly a hundred thousand people! There are some misogynists in Ohio as well. Does that make the entire state a misogynistic one?

  • Riddles

    I can’t recall a single instance where r/atheism has been misogynistic, for the most part gender is rarely even mentioned at all

  • qwertyuiop

    I’m sure Jennifurret will return with links to the countless examples of mysogyny.

    Maybe she’s one of those people with no sense of humor who actively looks for things to be offended about? Or to her, misogyny means not hating men?

  • J

    @qwertyuiop: I certainly hope she does.. I would actually be less disappointed if she backed it up with something besides just making that sort of statement and then just ditching the discussion.

  • Michelle

    Can someone who uses reddit regularly please explain how to join a sub group so I can check out this page? A link would be even better.

  • J

    http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism

    There should be a think on the right hand side that says Atheism that has a +frontpage button if you wanted to add it to your reddits that show up when you go to reddit or appear first in the links along the top.

  • Reddit’s search function is horrible, but pretty much any time someone links to my blog, the majority of the comments are negative ones about my gender or appearance, not about the content of the post in question.

  • koroviev

    The search function is decorative, I think, but I found some of the more active links to your blog with google. In the comments of the “How to meet atheist women” link* I can see what you’re talking about, but I also noticed that most of those comments are downvoted way below the threshold.

    I’m not going to push it any further, but as somebody who reads /r/atheism daily, I want to say that I’ve seen more discussions in support of gender equality/outraged at gender discrimination than I can count but the few comments there are the only time I’ve seen people act like that there.

    But as that comment karma indicates, the community opinion of them is that they’re asshats and are not accurate representations of /r/atheism by any stretch of the imagination.
    Quite a few people dislike /r/atheism for quite a few valid reasons but sexism isn’t one of them.

    *http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/ahafv/how_to_meet_atheist_women_and_not_scare_them_away/

  • qwertyuiop

    Reddit’s search function is horrible, but pretty much any time someone links to my blog, the majority of the comments are negative ones about my gender or appearance, not about the content of the post in question.

    Copout accepted.

  • qwertyuiop

    http://www.reddit.com/domain/blaghag.com/

    I look forward to seeing your examples.

  • efrique

    Reddit’s search function is horrible, but pretty much any time someone links to my blog, the majority of the comments are negative ones about my gender or appearance, not about the content of the post in question.

    I’m a regular on r/atheism, and I believe Jen could well have copped some jerky comments from some redditors. However, that’s not evidence that r/atheism is significantly jerky, it’s evidence that it’s *huge*.

    r/atheism has a hundred thousand subscribed readers. And quite a few more that read it now and then without subscribing. Think about how big that is!

    It attracts all sorts, including a percentage of people who are jerks, large numbers of teenagers with overactive hormones and so on. If one percent of r/atheism’s readers are sexist jerks likely to descend on your blog, that’s a thousand jerks!

    The other 99,000 might be lovely.

    r/atheism is a very open forum, and has all sorts in it, including a large complement of thoughtful and helpful commenters. Within r/atheism itself, sexist or racist comments from jerks generally – though not always – get downvoted to obscurity in short order – but when the jerks follow links to other blogs, of course they don’t have that same constraint holding them down, and so are more visible.

  • efrique

    Incidentally, on the reddit page pointing to this article, there’s a handful of women saying “what sexism?” (plus a few guys, but I’m not counting the guys because we may be blind to it) and so far nobody pointing to any particularly notable examples of it (I have seen a few examples in the past, so it wouldn’t be all that hard for someone there who felt the need to point to examples to find them).

    I imagine some will pop up in the thread eventually.

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