The Internet Can Still Be Good

Reddit, of all places, suggests how.

- By Adrienne LaFrance

In the ever-expanding universe of obsolete sounds, few can compare to the confident yawp of a dial-up modem. Back in the early days, the internet was slow, but we didn't know it yet. Or at least we didn't care. And why should we have? The stuff of the web was organic, something you had to plant and then harvest. It took time. Websites popped up like wild-flowers. Far-flung enthusiasts found one another, but gradually. Nobody owned the web, and everybody did. It was open, and everything seemed possible. Everything was possible. Maybe it still is.

Strange things are happening online these days. Strange bad, clearly. But also strange good. One unexpected development is that Reddit, long dogged by a reputation for mischief and mayhem, has achieved a kind of mass appeal. If you ask your friends where they've been hanging out online lately, you're likely to hear some of them say Reddit, actually, perhaps with a tinge of surprise.

Reddit's founders didn't set out to save the web. College roommates Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian wanted to create a mobile food-ordering service. But their idea didn't make sense, at least not at the time. It was 2005; the iPhone didn't exist yet. So they built something else, no less ambitious: a site that promised to be "the front page of the internet." Reddit was a place to share all manner of memes, photographs, questions, embarrassing stories, and ideas. Users could upvote posts into internet virality, or sometimes infamy. Eventually, they built their own communities, known as subreddits.

For the first decade of its existence, Reddit was not exactly a respectable place to hang out. Like its spiritual cousin 4chan, Reddit was primarily known for, among other things, creepshots, revenge porn, abject racism, anti-Semitism, and violent misogyny. Endearing corners of Reddit existed, but you couldn't get to them without stumbling over some seriously disturbing material.