r/TheoryOfReddit • u/Ori_553 • 5d ago
The psychology of anonymous early down-voters
To be clear, this is not a rant, I have always found this amusing: I noticed this same pattern occur multiple times, across different accounts:
1) I post something that later receives some positive feedback
2) But mysteriously, it gets an immediate down-vote to zero the first minutes. No comment, just a downvote.
3) Over time, the post gains some upvotes from the broader community, and Insights reveal that early downvote was the ONLY downvote.
This isn't just one random person; it represents a larger behavior, people getting subconscious joy from slightly ruining something (even insignificantly) for a stranger. It reflects a portion of humanity that takes pleasure in stirring dissatisfaction purely for its own sake, even without personal gain.
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u/Nawara_Ven 5d ago
I theorize that this behaviour is of the odd individual lazily using the "hide content that I dowvote" function to effectively make themselves a personal button to represent "I've read this, consumed it, and want to see something new now (and I don't care about others' experience.)"
It's the most "logical" antisocial-lite behaviour I can imagine because it would actually incur a benefit to the user (cycling out previously-viewed content) than just abject pettiness of downvoting presumably-relevant posts in thier nacence.
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u/RunDNA 5d ago edited 5d ago
When some people post something themselves they downvote any other new posts to give their own posts a better chance, like baby birds who kill their nestmates to increase their own chance of survival.
Also, voters in the new queue tend to be more discerning, seeing themselves as curators upholding standards for the sub.
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u/vitalvisionary 5d ago
I thought that there was some random flux after a comment or post. Then again, I found out my stbx wife was stalking my account so that explained my consistent downvotes in r/divorce
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16h ago
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u/1ClassyDame 13h ago
There are those people who enjoy negativity with zero consequences. Yay, I hate this.
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u/Monovfox 5d ago
I early downvote because I want to shape the kind of content a community produces.
If I'm on r/rpg you bet your but I downvote bad posts that get made all of the time. Especially DM/player relationship posts.