Reddit as gaming community microcosm

Popular online social news and entertainment site Reddit as social economy game/ parallel to game culture

Reddit.com is a site where users submit content in the form of a link or a text (self) post, and then other users show their appreciation  of displeasure with the post by voting the submission either up or down. Submissions that have a high ratio of upward votes (Upvotes) to downward votes (Downvotes) gain more visibility. The site is comprised of divided communities or "subreddits", and as a registered user of the site you are given the ability to create your own community with a focus on anything you like, politics, movies, games, music etc.

On each registered user account there is a counter that records the number of upvotes that the account has garnered over the course of its posting history. This number, known as Karma, essentially acts as an indication of how successful the poster is at submitting interesting or thought-provoking content. This is the sole function of Karma. You cannot redeem these points for anything, they have no monetary value whatsoever and yet there are people who dedicate hefty amounts of their time to collecting these points in the most efficient way possible.

 In this way reddit can be seen as an economy (or hoarding) simulator of sorts,  the purpose of which is to gain capital or - the approval of the users present on the site. In this economy there are producers, users who generate or find content, and two kinds of consumers: passive consumers, who either are not registered or do upvote or downvote, and active consumers, registered users who contribute to the game economy by voting their opinions on the content presented. Within this system, it's not illogical to assume that new and interesting content will be rated more highly and that boring or reused content will be rated poorly and thus lose visibility.

However, this is largely not the case and reposts (knock-offs) of popular posts are rife, some being unintentional and some not, but many receiving near or as many positive votes as the original. Often posts with a new point of view are rejected while  (very)slightly different iterations of the same old viewpoint are rewarded.

Why is this?

58% of reddit users are below 35 and over 60% are male, and to this end, the main content producers of reddit tailor their posts to this demographic. For presenting or agreeing with generally held beliefs of the relevant subreddit, users are accepted and thus more likely to gain positive feedback and incentive to post more. Successful posts are popular posts, so the cycle repeats itself ad nauseam until the core beliefs of the majority demographic are ingrained into the economics of the game.  Much like the gaming community at large, within reddit change is often seen as a threat to many and thus is stamped out.

The stagnation brought about by these attitudes mirrors that which we see in the gaming industry, as do many of the prevailing attitudes regarding sexuality, race and gender. The answer to this on reddit is to have moderators, who manage their own communities. Some are well managed (new content, fresh ideas, adherence to rules - /r/askscience) and some are poorly managed (little respect for forum rules or guidelines with little intervention of the moderators in the way of enforcing). These are in isolated communities however and a global solution is yet to be found. What is the solution for games? A regulatory body or screening process? Inspectors?

As an economical model reddit is a microcosm of gaming society (as well as a part of it) as it showcases the cycle of content and belief reinforcement  that we see as gamers, in the form of a game where the aim is to manipulate and utilise popular opinion for profit.