I've already unsubscribed from the majority of front page subs. I keep /r/WTF around for cheap entertainment, since its less banal than /r/funny and sometimes makes me giggle. Maybe once a month. Well it used to.

The thing is that /r/Games was supposed to be the better version of /r/gaming. It was smaller, had a better team of moderators, and made honest attempts to avoid being another gaming, which was really goddamn awful. So the place where I had taken refuge, and generally was okay with, had its first little cracks in the wall.

The same is happening with /r/movies, though in a much worse way. I didn't actually mind the Christopher Nolan circlejerk since at this point I'm so used to watching communities have a competent director's dick in their collective mouths that it really doesn't shock me, and occasionally they have had some decent posts.

It wasn't until I started noticing the Wreck-It Ralph posts that I realized just how bad the sub had gotten. Wreck-It Ralph was a competent movie, if that. Its primarily a movie in which a gimmick is used for the first half and then the plot of the movie progresses with the gimmick totally forgotten except for a small House of the Dead scene. It is a movie which I was surprised hadn't been made earlier, since the basic draw of the movie is exploiting pre-established icons of popular gaming culture in order to draw a crowd by making them feel like they are part of the inner circle of a group that doesn't exist except for in this artificial setting.

I was critical of it, and was downvoted, but they, fine. There was some discussions going on. I don't mind getting people who disagree with me to talk, I just want people to talk.

Then today there was a post of a can of Barbasol with a title stating at the OP associated it with Jurassic Park, and then proceeded to ask what other things people associated with movies.

If that was some sort of way to tell how effective product placement has been, bravo W&K you have once again proven that people will voluntarily surrender marketing data by the thousands without giving it a second thought. Would you like to know my credit card so you can directly charge me for the products you are advertising? How about my address so you can ship them to me?

Because if its not a marketing scheme, then its one of the stupidest posts of all time. Its not even a scene from the movie. It is a picture of a can of shaving cream taken from google images and given minimal context in the form of a movie. But because people see that association, go "oh my god, Jurassic park! I love that movie that has been marketed to me for 15 years or so!" and proceed to upvote it to a score of +12XX.

I can only reach maybe three conclusions here. 1. Maybe I'm being way too overly confident in the ability of the people who post on the site. 2. There is some sort of secret web page that the link takes everyone else to but me, or 3. The system is broken and promotes dumb but popular ideas.

Now yes, I might have a high standard for what is a good submission, but I do try and recognize that not everything I agree with or like is good. I don't post Two best Friends Play in /r/Games because its not a video for that section.

Regarding the history of reddit, I sure hope the children off of 4chan stay there. /b/ is at least offensive. I can actually enjoy a very biting forum rather than a very bland one.