I noticed that pretty much every post and comment here gets downvoted to oblivion. This is a massive sub but nothing gets over 50 upvotes. What’s going on?

Edit: You guys downvoting this are only proving my point.

25 comments

  1. There are some REALLY BAD questions that are dropped here based on REALLY BAD generalizations.

  2. When questions aren’t asked in good faith, people will downvote. Unfortunately, most of the questions aren’t asked in good faith.

  3. I would say mainly because so many questions are either in bad faith, begging the question, beaten to death, plain ridiculous, irrelevant, or easily Googleable.

  4. Many loaded questions or questions asked in bad faith. I’ve seen too many times where an OP will ask a question even though their mind is already made up and they’ll try to argue with everyone in the comments

  5. I’ve noticed this sub is VERY defensive. Granted, there are a lot of people asking stupid shit that the regulars get sick of. But if you’re an outsider posting what you think is a reasonable question, and you don’t know that we already get that question a lot, you will get responses that seem (and usually are) needlessly hostile. It’s one of the most noteworthy flaws of this sub IMO, and it causes people to assume a lot of things are asked in bad faith. Many things are, but not as many as people act like.

  6. Head over to r/AskAGerman I don’t think Germans are capable of giving out good karma. Seriously, it a schadenfreude fest over there or something.

  7. A lot of down votes are justly, but there are a lot of down votes comes from people with issues. You have to deal with it in reddit

  8. Either the questions are asked in bad faith or the questions either been asked a million times. Also, stop asking how much a certain medical procedure would cost in the US, the answer it always “it depends”. Could be anywhere from $0 to $500,000.00, it’s extremely situational and can’t be answered without a bunch of specifics.

  9. Tons of bad faith questions. A lot of making wild assumptions about the US and stating it as fact as the premise for the question.

  10. >Downvoting this is only proving my point.

    I mean… if you ask for downvotes, I’ll give downvotes

  11. Part of it is this sub can get defensive. I think that’s a given. Not absolving this sub but a good portion of Redditors, outside this sub, are flooded with “America bad” posts and comments based on either a very niche snippet of a circumstance or something they heard someone say because they saw it on tv once 15 years ago in another country.

  12. I think it’s a kneejerk defensiveness that comes from so many bad faith or accusatory questions. We get a lot of questions where the premise itself is flawed, so they’re impossible to answer. We get a lot of questions that throw in pointless jabs (banter doesn’t translate well online, so a lighthearted quip comes across as mean). We get a lot of questions where the user just wants to tell us why our way of doing something is wrong and theirs is right.

    That being said, I think this sub goes overboard with the downvoting. Like that poor user asking about the relationship between fire departments and ambulances. That was an interesting question and they didn’t say a single nasty thing and were asking straightforward reasonable questions, but they were getting downvoted! The post and the user! It was wild. I wonder if some of that comes from Reddit users who are the stereotypical bitter basement dweller types who get worked up over what they deem “stupid” questions.

  13. Because a lot of the questions are blatantly ridiculous. 

    “Why do Americans use both nostrils when they blow their nose instead of covering one blowing out the other?”

    “Do American plugs break easily when you step on them?”

    “Why don’t Americans eat this food only found on one small region of Kazakhstan?”

    It gets old.

  15. “Edit: You guys downvoting this are only proving my point.”

    That part may be a bit. A lot of people had the same idea for a joke.

  18. Downvoting is absolutely deserved for discussions like [this one from yesterday](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/1ar1le7/whats_up_with_the_homeless_veterans_thing/), which was removed. Did you see that one before it was removed, u/OrbitalColony?

    Paraphrasing, the premise was a combination of:

    * the US only joined wars when their allies had already won the wars

    * there were actually very few US deaths in wars because of the above

    * US veterans are all “bad” people who commit “bad” acts

    Overall, if the question was made in bad faith, makes asinine assumptions, is unjustifiably ignorant, and/or contains an “America Bad” premise, I downvote.

  20. I literally just went to the sub’s main page and had to scroll through 23 posts to find the first one that was downvoted.

    It was this post.

  21. Partly because this sub attracts a lot of “America bad” posts, and partly because some of the people responding can be downright condescending.

  23. Because it’s one of the last places on Reddit where normal people can post their opinions without being banned or ostracized. The rest of Reddit doesn’t like that so there are downvote brigades that attack anything right of Lenin.

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