It's a recurring joke on Reddit, the hivemind and the magic internet points, but it is also true. Generally, Reddit gets one opinion about something and then everyone hates it, until what I call the "second opinion bias" steps in. But largely it is just an echo chamber for people of one opinion that gets worse and worse. Many people feel opposite to the opinion but so as to not get downvoted, like I did when I said to a commenter saying not to buy the $80 collector's edition if he didn't want to pay for it, then called him ridiculous when he compared me telling him that to denying a family a new house after their old one burned down, they hedge their bets saying things like "they still nuked the... relationship."

I remember when we on Reddit were trying very hard to destroy Digg. I mean actively ruin it. Why? No reason at all. A little later, 2010 I think, Reddit was ASTONISHED marijuana use was not voted in as legal in California despite the entire Reddit front page being full of ads for it (by design of the members), and then Reddit, the company, taking out ads ITSELF for legalizing marijuana. They didn't understand that they weren't the whole world. Unfortunately, because of some games journalists, they are getting attention like they actually are. For example, the Forbes guy who covers Destiny is basically "12 hours ago on the Destiny subreddit." All he does is regurgitate what they say there, and he doesn't even form his own opinions, despite being an opinion columnist.

The hivemind is even confusing to Redditors. There is a subreddit called Out of the Loop where basically people ask questions about memes going around on Reddit and what it is about. "Why do we hate X now?" et cetera. Once it hits this point, we get the second opinion bias. For example, last summer I think Avril was getting a bunch of crap. I wrote a massive, billion word post about it, and copy and pasted it into a few places where people wanted more info. I got about 5 upvotes. However, once Reddit had enough of this, the users were looking for a second opinion, and one I posted, the same text, got gilded 6 times, front paged twice, and was all over the website. Avril Lavigne hate stopped shortly thereafter.

I think we're going to see Reddit employ its second opinion bias on this thing very soon. Someone will say "Actually, Lukems was great and here's why." And Reddit will eat it up because that's what it does. This is the exact reason so much bullshit comes from that site.