I look back and realize I would write and delete comments because I would be sure I’d have another redditor debating or nitpicking something unimportant, a lot of interactions were just antagonistic.

I hear ya - I did the exact same. I felt the urge to contribute, to write something thoughtful, but I knew that, once I said something, most replies would boil down to “ackshyually”, “I dun unrurrstand”, whining, bossing me around, distorting what I said, so goes on. The orange mail icon made me immediately think “oh great here comes some moron…”, and my blocklist had ~500 users - mind you that I actively avoided larger subs, so 500 blocks from smaller subs.

It tells you a lot when even 4chan - known for its rude and obnoxious users - is abler to hold a decent conversation than Reddit.

Although to be frank what did it for me wasn’t the API debacle, I knew it for a long time. It’s just that most alternatives were either too slow or too specific to settle in. (Including Lemmy. This place was slow. Like, real slow.)

And, before the API debacle, there was still something worth seeing. Like a pearl thrown in the mud, you know? Past the API debacle, the pearl is gone.

If i never see a post about people complaining about karma or other meaningless internet points again, it’ll be too soon!

Amen.

It has been a slow decline, but since they didn’t disable old reddit and 3rd party readers it was able to limp along.

Then they woke up and chose violence.