The only thing I see reddit as being useful for is its oddly specific questions.
The mentality on that site is "support everything as long as it follows our values as a whole" so you'll see a bunch of a random questions being answered relatively well, personally helping me with those random things I know nothing about.
As a normal place to be though? It's brainwashing. Most people don't spend enough time on these sites to realize but I've worked a job where I had a solid 3 hours out of every day to browse. It's quite literally the same opinions being held at the top of the comment section. If your opinion isn't in line with the standard, it's downvoted, regardless of your fact behind it.
For example, I've had an argument with someone about anxiety and they described their issue as mentally debilitating. They really couldn't handle chatting with someone online, let alone talking with people. I have no issue with that but I did point out that we've been arguing back and forth for maybe 5-6 posts now and they have been growing with aggressiveness. Over this argument, I received close to 100 downvotes, then got banned from the community.
The initial post? It was about a drug to treat anxiety and how groundbreaking it was going to be. I mentioned in my post that, coming from a family of pharmacists and seeing effects firsthand, I know of a lot of people who get significantly worse because of drugs like this. Specifically mentioning that you need to get tested in multiple ways before something like this should be considered (talking about the effects of a similar drug for depression).
Socially it's a terrible place to be. Factually, quite interesting if you ignore karma (but they make it really hard to ignore karma).
Definitely saw him and he contributes to the lack of eye contact I give other people. It's hard to look at someone 1 on 1 when you see another person taking attention away. Back to the point, it wasn't super common to see him all the time. You know how you zone out of certain things but are still able to do the tasks? It was like that when he would visually appear.
Auditory would happen a lot more frequently because I was relatively focused on what was going on. Whether it be solving a problem in school and him seeing an error I had done previously, telling me to look back at the question, or him just talking with me about something random, I could hear him. Kind of like the whole whisper in your ear thing but I primarily heard it like he was right behind me talking to my brain (inside my skull to the back of my head).
Presence wise, maybe? I only say that because I rarely flinched because of him. For example, when he first started popping up, I would actually get surprised, maybe even try moving out of the way. Eventually though, I wouldn't even bat eye. I definitely knew what he was going to do and he would definitely do things that would catch others off guard but I saw it coming. If that's the presence you're referring to, then yes.
As someone who's had this when I was a teenager, I can comment on a few things about it.
Mine looked like me. It actually was me, but younger. I imagined him when I was 11 and he never really aged.
I could see him everywhere, sometimes screaming at me from the bleachers on the football field, or right in front of my face. The unique thing though is that he would always comment on what I was doing. It was almost as if I was a machine and he would guide me to where I would go. This being said, there were a lot of disagreements I had with him.
I would notice that when I got overly emotional, he would disappear. When things settled down, he'd come back and comment saying how I shouldn't have thought of/done what I had. I'd have the emotional argument with my logical second personality. We were so distinct from each other that, even looking back on it now, he felt evil.
The biggest benefit for sure was that I never felt alone. People around me were genuinely worried about how much time I spent isolated from everyone else, but it never felt that way. It always felt like I had someone, arguably more important than friends because it seemed like he kept me alive.
The worst part about it was the 'mob' mentality. Initially it didn't seem like much but I noticed that there were some things that I wouldn't have agreed with months before. My opinions would change constantly and it all depends on what he would say. Just imagine overthinking and then having a really close and trusted friend jump to even worse extremes because they feel like it would keep you safe.
Definitely bad to my overall health but I wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for him.
The mentality on that site is "support everything as long as it follows our values as a whole" so you'll see a bunch of a random questions being answered relatively well, personally helping me with those random things I know nothing about.
As a normal place to be though? It's brainwashing. Most people don't spend enough time on these sites to realize but I've worked a job where I had a solid 3 hours out of every day to browse. It's quite literally the same opinions being held at the top of the comment section. If your opinion isn't in line with the standard, it's downvoted, regardless of your fact behind it.
For example, I've had an argument with someone about anxiety and they described their issue as mentally debilitating. They really couldn't handle chatting with someone online, let alone talking with people. I have no issue with that but I did point out that we've been arguing back and forth for maybe 5-6 posts now and they have been growing with aggressiveness. Over this argument, I received close to 100 downvotes, then got banned from the community.
The initial post? It was about a drug to treat anxiety and how groundbreaking it was going to be. I mentioned in my post that, coming from a family of pharmacists and seeing effects firsthand, I know of a lot of people who get significantly worse because of drugs like this. Specifically mentioning that you need to get tested in multiple ways before something like this should be considered (talking about the effects of a similar drug for depression).
Socially it's a terrible place to be. Factually, quite interesting if you ignore karma (but they make it really hard to ignore karma).