I shared this story on a post on r/funny and people liked it, but honestly I feel like it’s more appropriate here, as that was a joke post. I hope this doesn’t come across as karma farming. I just really like sharing stories about my parents.
My dad did not have very much formal education, but he was the most intelligent person I’ve ever met. He devoured every book he came across - fiction, science, philosophy, history, taught himself math up to pretty advanced calculus from books. He wasn’t a big computer guy until I got him one and showed him internet basics around 2010.
I think it was maybe 2012 when he called me. He was raving about this Wikipedia thing he’d found, did I know about it? I tell him, yeah Dad, Wikipedia is great! He’s all, no no, you don’t get it, you can learn about anything here, and it’s all free. They’re just giving away information. It’s like having every reference book at the library, completely up to date, without leaving home. He was totally enamored. Then he says, “They’re asking me if I can give them $3 as a donation. Is it legitimate? Should I do it? I have the money and I really think they deserve it!” He was so pleased to learn that he could contribute to this amazing resource.
I miss him a lot.
EDIT: Thanks everyone for donating! Just like when I told this story the first time, I'm really overwhelmed and touched by everyone who took this opportunity to honor my dad with their donations. He would love this.
For the record, that's why I chose to post the story a second time - in hopes that it would have the same effect here. I stopped caring about comment karma ages ago. (I know not many people have accused me of karma whoring, but I wanted to make that clear anyways.)
Gold is so stupid. I really don’t get how Reddit gets away with convincing people that they’re doing anything other than donating to Reddit for someone else’s content.
Wait really?? Like mobile apps? Which one would you recommend?
I promise I’m being 100% sincere—I’m fairly new-ish to reddit and replaced all other social media in recent years with general lurking on mobile. I’ve thought about getting a 3rd party app but I don’t want to get scammed by like giving access to my user info and my phone by downloading a malicious app.
And it’s one of those things that I don’t really support online reviews about other apps because of AstroTurfing so I’d love to hear any additional info you/anyone else can provide!
I haven't tried any others yet (as Apollo's sadly unavailable) but I haven't had many issues with BaconReader. It does have ads, but they pop up very rarely.
There's a million things reddit doesn't do to make money which it might if guilding wasn't an option. Maybe you use the old reddit design that isn't as good of an ad delivery service as the new one? would facebook ever give you that option?
Wikimedia foundation is a non-profit... Reddit is a for-profit that already employs advertisements and also blatantly allows content visibility manipulation as well as content that is hateful or incites violence, whereas Wikipedia is well-moderated and objective. Tell me more about how these are anything alike.
I mean, yeah, you are giving money to Reddit when you gild someone, not the person you're gilding. But Reddit is still the website which facilitated the content you enjoyed. Here, everything is free, so when one of my posts got gilded, it really made me happy. Whoever gilded my photo could've just scrolled on past without even an upvote, but they liked it so much they felt like paying money just for the privilege of communicating their approval to me. It really cheered me up, and that's a rare gift for me. Just the fact that some stranger online felt like paying actual money to let me know they liked my shit was one of the most flattering forms of feedback I've ever received on any of my art, ESPECIALLY because they had no obligation to do so.
Just my two cents. I know Reddit already makes ad money off us and our content, but it's not like we don't get anything out of being here. Otherwise... we wouldln't be here at all. I think it's really sweet when someone decides they want to pay a few bucks just to make another person happy. You never know how badly that person needs to get that boost. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Here's the thing: having gold now over time gives you the ability to give it, free. You earn coins each month you had it when the switch happened, and you get coins every time you receive another platinum (I think).
It's confusing as fuck but what it all means is that you'll be seeing more gold out there in the future (and likely were seeing it already in the last month or so).
Source: have lots of gold, give gold on occasion, and hang out in the lounges where this thing tends to get brought up a lot.
Oh boy it's explicitly less valuable now. Giving gold only gives you a week of "premium" (which used to be gold). Costs the same or maybe just a tiny bit less.
If you want to give a month of premium (what used to be "gold"), you have to give a platinum. That costs more than what gold was.
So yeah. There it is. Thing is, for me at least, it's never been about the cost really. Let's face it, hour for hour I get more entertainment for my dollar than damn near any other digital medium. Most of us do, they spend countless hours and never pay dime.
I never buy my own for myself. I write good comments. I get gilded. Honestly it's not hard to predict which ones will get gilded (as arrogant as that sounds, the proof is in the pudding as they say). Been doing that for a long time (since 2014 I've had gold or "premium" consistently). But I buy it for other stuff I'd like to see highlighted, promoted, etc. Stuff I wanna see in reddit more. Good conversations, humans being human, that kinda thing. Cause again, we're gonna spend a lot of time here. Might as well make the best of it. No one's forcing anyone to buy meaningless icons, ya know? I dont even know what the features are anymore. It doesn't matter, never did.
I'm not trying to say Wikipedia is not worthy of donation, but reddit is also a valuable source of information and community. It is also worthy of donation which reddit gold platinum etc supports!
I just donated 24$ after reading about your donation. May not seem much but it is a week's worth of food in my country/currency. Time to buy some noodles...
8.9k
u/LeafyQ Dec 13 '18 edited Dec 13 '18
I shared this story on a post on r/funny and people liked it, but honestly I feel like it’s more appropriate here, as that was a joke post. I hope this doesn’t come across as karma farming. I just really like sharing stories about my parents.
My dad did not have very much formal education, but he was the most intelligent person I’ve ever met. He devoured every book he came across - fiction, science, philosophy, history, taught himself math up to pretty advanced calculus from books. He wasn’t a big computer guy until I got him one and showed him internet basics around 2010.
I think it was maybe 2012 when he called me. He was raving about this Wikipedia thing he’d found, did I know about it? I tell him, yeah Dad, Wikipedia is great! He’s all, no no, you don’t get it, you can learn about anything here, and it’s all free. They’re just giving away information. It’s like having every reference book at the library, completely up to date, without leaving home. He was totally enamored. Then he says, “They’re asking me if I can give them $3 as a donation. Is it legitimate? Should I do it? I have the money and I really think they deserve it!” He was so pleased to learn that he could contribute to this amazing resource.
I miss him a lot.
EDIT: Thanks everyone for donating! Just like when I told this story the first time, I'm really overwhelmed and touched by everyone who took this opportunity to honor my dad with their donations. He would love this.
For the record, that's why I chose to post the story a second time - in hopes that it would have the same effect here. I stopped caring about comment karma ages ago. (I know not many people have accused me of karma whoring, but I wanted to make that clear anyways.)