Today I came across an intriguing question on the Legend of Dragoon subreddit. A person asked if they were the only one who upvoted just about everything on the subreddit just because they liked the game and were happy people keep talking about it. At the time of writing, the post has garnered nearly 100 upvotes and unanimous praise to the extent that some are totally okay with upvoting poor content. As Dart would say, “Wow!” I had attempted to write two paragraphs at most in response, but it became hard to shorten as there is a sh!t-ton of nuance that is almost entirely overlooked – or at least rarely spoken of. I know how society is, and at the same time I’m amazed nobody else is thinking about the layers involved in the topic of upvoting without discrimination. It’s a real issue worth talking about.
It’s fine to be happy that people are posting about the game – be that someone’s origin story, fun memes, questions, and so on. It’s all part of the community experience! In that sense everything has value; especially for a now-legacy title that has not received updates. On top of that, numbers play a key role in getting that extra attention we want the game to have. Tack on the fact that we’re at a point of complete media saturation in general. So many things push to get our attention as it is. Jobs, families and other real-life obligations. A mountain of shows, films, games, and music. Even if the game has been underrepresented, Legend of Dragoon has a lot to compete with in terms of exposing the game to newcomers. We have a long road ahead, phew.
I don’t like being a “principles or die” person – that’s a bit extreme – but that doesn’t mean I will support all content blindly just because it has “LoD” in it. I upvote posts that generate good discourse, or had some kind of effort or quality instilled in them. I upvote comments that add to the topic – whether I agree or not. In addition, it has been explicitly communicated that they are not “I agree” buttons. So if everyone upvotes everything, well, what’s the point of an upvote anymore?
Some folks mention that they’re trying to help get the game recognized in doing so, effectively rewriting the core purpose of an upvote. Cool, and also, that hasn’t been effective in the six years of the subreddit’s existence. For some reason people don’t seem to get that or realize it? It’s this hopeful idea that has no basis in reality while we have other, more feasible methods that are somehow unknown and not given the spotlight. I dunno what creates this kind of conclusion. Maybe it’s just the “love is blind” effect.
I know we seldom have the time, energy, or will to write more than a sentence of agreement. Socializing needs to be a bit straightforward, quick and accessible. However, I think that the general attitude about upvoting – as seen in numerous comment replies on the subreddit overall – permeates a grander issue: the idea that we all enjoy or love the game, and as a result we as a fandom are infallible and should always support each other regardless of the content quality or why we’re upvoting. To me that weakens our integrity and weakens us as a community. At that point it’s not just the value of the posts and commentary at stake – our value is at stake.
People in general don’t want to have to worry about things like reddiquette or the idea that it’s not helpful to upvote every post/comment they enjoy. I’m certainly not going to be able to change that mentality and I don’t necessarily want to tell people “how to Reddit” either. What I do know, is that we don’t need to resort to mass-upvoting to increase our fanbase or appeal to folks who aren’t in the fandom. There are more effective ways to boost our outreach, from cross-posting to a more popular subreddit (r/gaming , r/RPG) to engaging in dialogue with other parts of the global community. Facebook groups, forums, Discord… the list goes on a long ways. In fact, this is going to be a fine topic for one of my next blogs~