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I’ve been frequenting a website called Reddit(caution: adult content in content marked with nsfw) lately.  I think it is kind of cool the way it is structured.  Users post some kind of content, pictures/text/links/video/etc. and everyone else in the community gets to ‘upvote’ or ‘downvote’ the content.  The more upvotes a piece of content gets, the more it is pushed towards the first page of content.  Downvotes work in the opposite manner.  Thus, the community actively is constantly receiving/giving new content and it shares the coolest bits of it with everyone else while avoiding the boring/trashy/duplicate content.  You can also include a comment on that content and the same vote policy also governs the comments on each piece of content.  I’m always a big fan of bottom-up structure instead of top-bottom; I think it provides the users with enough power to play within the system while disallowing the higher-ups from playing with the system.  However, it does have the same major problem that a solely-community-driven community encounters: the hive-mind.  The hive-mind refers “to the shared beliefs and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society.”  This isn’t always a bad thing or even wrong for that matter.  I mean I guess humans, for the most part, have a hive-minded attitude towards murder, rape, abuse, etc.  That’s good.  People, by nature, tend to surround themselves with mostly people who think similarly to themselves to some degree.  The problem begins when a hive-mind starts to become hostile to others not subscribing to it.  Reddit has a notoriously hostile hive-mind mostly pertaining to a couple of specific issues:

• Christianity: Christians are seen as stupid, ignorant, mindless people.  The subreddit page about atheism is one of the more popular pages on reddit, but it contains more anti-Christianity content than pro-atheist content.  To a lesser extent, the same is also applied to Islam.  Atheists are seen as enlightened heroes.
• Republicans: Again, republicans are seen as stupid, ignorant, clueless people that apparently want nothing more than to destroy America and tax all of its citizens to death.
• American International Policy: Any time America pokes around in another country’s affairs, it is terrible and a breach of their sovereignty.  Most recently, Isreal’s actions have been close to murder and America’s support of Israel is a terrible thing.
• The Police: The police are huge jerks with too much power and are always tazing, shooting, beating, and killing random people for no reason.

Here is a particular example I thought was rather harsh.  The picture was posted and this comment had received the most upvotes-this is the comment most people thought that others should see first.

I think, that on some level, religious indoctrinators are PERFECTLY AWARE of how nonsensical and ridiculous the beliefs they seek to perpetuate are. That is WHY they so eagerly seek out the young. On some level in their minds, they know PERFECTLY DAMN WELL that if they wait until a young person has developed skills in critical thinking and skepticism, that the indoctrination won’t ‘take’.

I think that makes them the worst kind of cynical double thinking hypocrites.

This is the reddit hive-mind’s view of Christianity.  How sad.  How terrible.  We are scary close-minded(literaly) people who prey upon children in order to brainwash them into believing ‘nonsensical’ myths.  I’m torn whenever I see people on reddit post things like this.  Part of me is furious.  Really?  If you honestly believe that we think our own beliefs ridiculous, prey on kids, can’t stand up to critical thinking, or even that we are responsible for holding back science(that’s my favorite one) I honestly have to say that you are the indoctrinated one.  I’m sorry that as a parent, they try to raise their child to believe what they think is the right way to live.  Calling an indoctrination foul has its place, but not as a blanket statement!

Another part of me is sad for them.  Did most of these people experience some sort of childhood where Christianity was shoved down their throats all the time?  I feel for those people, I really do.  They see Christianity as this terrible force that comes to enslave and Jesus as this hardened school teacher punishing you for every sin.  I pray they realize that that wasn’t Christianity.  And this picture isn’t either.  I pray they encounter Jesus in his reality through some other means.  I pray they are actively searching and not just shouting out indoctrination fouls while they themselves are indoctrinated with another religion.  You can find all the examples of harsh, rule-founded people claiming to show Christ’s love to others, but that doesn’t make Christ’s love any less real.  You can take all the Bible verses you want out of context in an attempt to make the Bible say things it isn’t, but in the end you can’t escape Christ’s love found right there in the word.

Now, I am not hating on reddit.  I really enjoy it; I particularly really love the gaming and lolcat sections.  But it does suffer from this hive-mind which can make sharing differing thoughts on reddit sometimes just downright impossible.  Whether your differing content gets downvoted so far that it can’t see the light of day or everyone gets nasty in the comment section, it is just hard to survive once the hive-mind has targeted you.  If you want a pretty well written thought on reddit, I would suggest you read this comment by an actual user.  But this aspect to the community is probably why I, and many others, will always remain a reader and never a contributor.