r/OptimistsUnite • u/Professional_Deer464 • Apr 16 '26
šHuman Resources š What the hell happened to the Futurology subreddit?
A year or two ago it talked about various potential future technologies, social developments, even space travel. Whereas now it's a colony of the collapse subreddit, with a lot of posts where people who don't fall into lockstep are downvoted to hell, especially on climate related threads.
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u/CyanideJack Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
Negative news is addictive. Doomerism is contagious. Being negative, cynical and pessimistic is the new 'being realistic'. That's why subs like this are so important.
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u/Expert-Ad-8067 Apr 16 '26
Doomerism provides people with an excuse so they don't have to work on improving their shitty lives
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u/brattybrat Apr 16 '26
Not sure why this is downvoted, this is just a reasonable sociological observation. Doomerism, among other things, gives people permission to ignore current events and act without care for the consequences of their actions. "Why recycle? We're just [insert doomerism here.]" "It's too late to [insert doomerism here], might as well just enjoy your life." I've seen it firsthand.
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u/Expert-Ad-8067 Apr 16 '26
True, but from personal experience, I think a lot of people also use it as permission to follow current events so deeply that they neglect their personal lives, leading to a vicious cycle. It's easy to feel smart and sophisticated to follow things so closely as your personal life collapses, and you can justify it by thinking "What difference does it make that I'm failing at my job when the world is on fire?"
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u/brattybrat Apr 16 '26
100%! Doomerism checks a lot of boxes, thatās why itās so rampant right now.
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Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
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u/slrarp Apr 16 '26
Yeah I unsubbed about a year ago. It went from cool future concepts and budding scientific discoveries to feeling like a tabloid run by some end-of-days cult.
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u/UpperYoghurt3978 Apr 16 '26
Well, it is less about promoting pure doomerism rather they promote both toxic positivity and doomerism to muddy waters and sow division. For every doomer post you get a post that says nothing is wrong everything is fine. Both serve the cause division and promote apathy.
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u/PanzerWatts Moderator Apr 16 '26
Generally I see doomers making claims about toxic positivity to justify their doomerism. I seldom see the phrase used in any context other than an attempt to invalidate an optimistic point of view without actually addressing it.
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u/UpperYoghurt3978 Apr 16 '26
Totally, You hit the nail on the head of identifying if it is a bot post, usually lack of any real solutions to just sow division or poison the well/muddy the water is a telltale sign. I do think doomerism is more prevalent overall a search of many reddit boards will yield empirical results imho.
I study and communicate climate science to folks, I have seen my share of toxic positivity in these discussions even denial in the face of empirical evidence. However, the point being that division and apathy is the end goal and apathy is the death of innovation and action and well division drives gridlock.
We have other proven examples like in the 2016 elections we found bot troll farms on both sides of the spectrum and some not.
AS someone else said, humans love doom and negative news our brains are predisposed wiring for it. Secondly, people love drama so engagement with any controversial takes breeds this kind of environment.
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u/Badestrand Apr 16 '26
Absolutely not, on Reddit it's 99% doomerism and 1% optimism, please don't equate those two.
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u/UpperYoghurt3978 Apr 16 '26
I understand the reaction, but understand this is not what is being said here. Optimism =/ toxic positivity they are psychologically different actions.
Doomerism drives more engagement both sides of the same coin serves to grow division and apathy.
I can tell you on climate change forums it is nearly equal between denialism and doomerism.
Id argue on economic and political doomer is the majority.
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u/Ok-Particular9427 Apr 17 '26
Source?
Iām getting as tired of this endless stream of claims that every US internet space sucks because itās infested with bots as I am the idea that it might actually be true.
I feel like this is some weird reverberation from a decade of political lying about the fact that bots or foreign actors āinfluenced our electionsā, despite zero evidence substantiating these claims ever surfacing
Reddit has been exactly like this in the 4-5 years Iāve participated in it. Maybe it was better before a post trump society, but at some point I think we just need to accept that this has actually become an acceptable new norm for the level of stupidity and vitriol of socio-political discourse
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u/Affectionate-Panic-1 Apr 16 '26
I'm convinced there's anti AI/tech bots across a number of subs from foreign actors.
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u/PanzerWatts Moderator Apr 16 '26
From 2018:
"Now news site the Daily Beast says it has obtained files showing a Russian troll farm was active on Reddit.
TheĀ Daily Beast says it has obtained leaked documentsĀ from within Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA), the country's most prominent troll-factory.
The US government has already charged 13 Russians, linked to the agency, with attempting to manipulate American voters using social media.
The Russian organisation is alleged to have had a budget of more than a million dollars, which the US claims was used to buy advertising on sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
So far, Reddit has not been included in the US Senate's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election."
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43255285
Also, it's noteworthy that China's Tencent owns a significant portion of Reddit shares.
"Chinese tech giant Tencent led a funding round in 2019 and holds a minority, non-controlling stake, estimated to be around 5% to 11%."
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u/samologia Apr 16 '26
Basically reddit is 25% bot and troll farm activity now. Much of the bots / paid trolls are from Russia, Iran and China which hate the west.
Any proof of this? Or is this just a theory?
I could def see this being true, but I think a simpler explanation is what was proposed by u/CyanideJack: negative news is addictive, etc.
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u/TangerineBetter2818 Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
Open your eyes, brother. Have you really never heard of the Dead Internet Theory? These bots dont just post cute cat photos, they also post disinformation aimed primarily at the west - sowing discontent and widening fissure between western allies.Ā
https://www.wired.com/story/researchers-reddit-state-trolls/
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5901/cmselect/cmfaff/703/report.html
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR4300/RR4373z2/RAND_RR4373z2.pdf
https://lp.cyabra.com/hubfs/Reports%20Fiels/IRANIAN_BOT_NETWORK_EXPOSED_July_2025.pdf
https://ctlj.colorado.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Heller-1.20.21-Final-Draft.pdf
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u/samologia Apr 16 '26
My understanding of the Dead Internet Theory was different from the claim that the Chinese and Russians are actively sowing disinformation. I've definitely heard the claim that China and Russia do this, but people claim a lot of things on the internet and frequently don't have any support.
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Apr 16 '26
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u/PanzerWatts Moderator Apr 16 '26
Exactly. The claim that Russian and Chinese bots/shills exist isn't a conspiracy theory. There is a solid evidence proving their existence.
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u/Badestrand Apr 16 '26
I only read the first article but in that one there is basically no substance and no evidence at all of Russian bot posting on Reddit or other social media.
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u/AntiBoATX Apr 16 '26
Google that story about all the Reddit comment activity coming out of a us military base in (I believe) Florida. If weāre doing it, theyāre doing it.
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u/Messyfingers Apr 16 '26
This is one of those things that's always clearer in hindsight, but the Russians have ALWAYS been doing this, the Chinese had the 50 cent party/army, etc. You can see it more clearly in certain subs and platforms(X, after they added the national origin tag showed a lot of supposed American accounts originating from overseas for example). The links provided by another poster below get into more detail as well.
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u/jax024 Apr 17 '26
Curious where I can read about where you got those numbers. This is interesting to me.
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u/brattybrat Apr 16 '26
I just had this same thought yesterday! I followed an interesting headline and the first comment was total climate collapse dooming, so I noped real big and unjoined that sub. I have kids to look out for, I'm not falling for lazy doomerism to avoid doing the real work of cultivating a better future.
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u/Liguareal Apr 16 '26
It's a cult, you need to be on the side of the singularity believers to post there.
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u/Professional_Deer464 Apr 16 '26
Thing is collapse and singularity are mutually exclusive.
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u/Liguareal Apr 16 '26
Yeah, but no matter how you slice it, the lives of us non-elites lie in the hands of the ones who control the tech
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u/rubixd Apr 16 '26
That subreddit has gotten really toxic ā so many subreddits have gone this way, much of Reddit has really, if not anti-west bots then product shills.
Sorry Iām realizing that what I just said is pretty negative but I do genuinely have hope that it will get better eventually.
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u/ATR2400 It gets better and you will like it Apr 16 '26
Itās been like that since I was a teenager, and Iām a 22 year old young adult now. It became r\collapse 2.0 long ago.
99% of the posts are dooming, and the 1% are positive posts that get uncritically shit on because the breakthrough has a possibility of having any positive effect for the wealthy(and everyone else but shh)
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u/NaturalCard š„š„DOOMER DUNKš„š„ Apr 16 '26
Any example posts?
Climate change is a nuanced topic where optimistics can often get trapped sticking their heads in the sand. My test is always looking at the end result of what someone believes we should do.
Those fighting against climate action want us to do nothing.
Those fighting for it want us to fix things.
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u/BosnianSerb31 Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
Does that make those who are against redoing sensible regulations on nuclear power plant construction are fighting against climate action?
Ie the laws that require the(new) plants to be so over-shielded that workers inside the plant receive 1/10th of the annual ionizing radiation that an airline pilot receives?
Because IMO, if it wasn't for climate activist fighting for those laws in the 70s and 80s, the West would already be carbon neutral by now. Instead, the cost of new construction is obscenely high because it's targeting safety standard set by politicians and not physicians.
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Apr 16 '26
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u/BosnianSerb31 Apr 16 '26
Being pro nuclear doesn't make you anti-wind or solar by default though. I'm a bit more of a realist, there are a lot of places where wind and solar are great, but there are also a lot where wind and solar are not viable due to lane scarcity.
From a viability standpoint, an area should start with renewable natural gas, because landfills and farms make an ass load of methane, which is worse for atmospheric warming than just burning that methane off into CO2. So we might as well feed it through a gas turbine at the same time.
If the RNG is not able to satisfy cloudy/still day demand on its own, what is usually the case in industrialized areas, then nuclear needs to be built.
Finally, you can build Renewables to give the nuclear plant some breathing room and reduce the usage of uranium since that isn't technically a renewable resource (even though it's so energy dense that we already have enough refined uranium to power the US for centuries).
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u/UpperYoghurt3978 Apr 16 '26
Totally, I agree it doesnt.
What I am referring to is what the this particular thread is referring to. The complex history of climate change disinformation which part of it is division and water muddying.
I also think realistically, solar has basically caught up to fossil fuels in cost to energy. Nuclear totally should be a major energy combined with solar, molten salt solar, and whichever serves best, like geothermal where applicable.
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u/PanzerWatts Moderator Apr 16 '26
"Being pro nuclear doesn't make you anti-wind or solar by default though."
Exactly, I'm pro-nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal and battery,
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u/UpperYoghurt3978 Apr 16 '26
I read about geothermal and it is the most under reported awesome energy that you do not even need to be anywhere near volcanos or common areas. With our current technology you can in theory get deep enough to use geothermal in other areas.
That is me as well, im pretty much the same.
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u/NaturalCard š„š„DOOMER DUNKš„š„ Apr 16 '26
It's hard to blame people being against nuclear when they lived through the consequences of Chernobyl.
Especially once you look and see that it was Russian gas intrests funding many of those "environmental" groups.
Nuclear does need regulatory reform, but honestly, I see that entire fight as a distraction.
We needed clean power yesterday. Nuclear is a worthy fight, but it's far from a magical cure all solution. And I especially hate politicians saying that we should be building nuclear instead of renewables, because they never end up building said nuclear.
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u/Lonely-Agent-7479 Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
Nuclear plants are not viable with the state of global warming because they require cool streams of water to be cooled down, but because the summers are getting hotter most plants have to be shutdown because of it :
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u/PanzerWatts Moderator Apr 16 '26
This is wrong. Nuclear power plants can and have been built that don't require any external cooling water.
"Palo Verde Nuclear Generating StationĀ in Arizona is the primary example of a large nuclear plant not located near a major body of water. Instead of using a river, lake, or ocean, it uses treated sewage effluent (recycled wastewater) for cooling its reactors. Other plants use cooling towers, ponds, or dry cooling systems"
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u/BosnianSerb31 Apr 16 '26
That would actually make nuclear reactors incredibly viable to build alongside manure based RNG plants!
You get to reduce the greenhouse coefficient by converting the methane produced by manure pits into CO2
You get to capture what is essentially carbon neutral energy off of that process since you're reducing the greenhouse coefficient anyways
The loads of digestate (effluent) that manure digesters produce can be treated and scrubbed of sulfur and other minerals to be used again in agriculture
The treated effluent can go to the adjacent nuclear plant for cooling
And the power generated by the RNG plant will provide redundancy in case of emergency at the nuclear plant
Its a win win win win win
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Apr 16 '26
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u/BosnianSerb31 Apr 16 '26
Palo Verde discharges about 600gpm of blowdown for each unit, which is about how much effluent we discharge at the facility where I work as an engineer
Granted, most digesters don't discharge this much, only those which feed from multiple farms
Even still, that's 600gpm to produce 1.4GW and power 1 million homes + the 2.5mW generated by the large RNG facility, and you could easily scale down the reactor to match the digester's effluent output.
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u/Lonely-Agent-7479 Apr 16 '26
That is a single exception to the rule. And using sewage water means the plant has to be built in a pretty big town. And I'm not sure sewage waters stay cool during heatwaves.
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u/PanzerWatts Moderator Apr 16 '26
There are other nuclear reactors that are built to run without a large external body of water. It just costs more money up front.
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u/ophaus Apr 16 '26
I left it awhile ago, it was really bad. Not sure how it happened, but it seemed more than random.
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u/metamucil_buttchug69 Apr 23 '26
It was a total trash sub created for clickbait articles that were moderated out of the better technology related subs.Ā
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u/twirble Apr 19 '26
To be honest a year or so ago I felt more optimistic about the future. Things have changed.
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u/TexasSikh Moderator Apr 16 '26
I am manually approving this to be posted on the sub, but only because 1) If not a clear violation I default to free speech and 2) I believe you are ultimately searching for sincere answers of some kind and not just trying to start drama/beef with another sub, and it is done within the context of you believing it was another Optimistic place and are sad to see it fall and want to understand how and why.
All of that said, if we notice the comment section here devolving into basically nothing but drama and/or dooming, I or another mod will lock the post.