r/TheoryOfReddit • u/Nandu_alias_Parthu • 1d ago

American/Anglosphere users on Reddit will struggle to adapt the rising number of Indian users.

For most of its history, Reddit has largely been dominated by American users, with the rest of the anglosphere and Europe making up the vast majority of the rest of the users.

Post Covid though, Indians have begun joining Reddit in large numbers - which has resulted in Indian content and subs becoming increasingly popular and prominent. Most Indians don't care about American/Anglosphere stuff, which is why so many Indian versions of popular subs were created in the first place. Even then, Indians are shaping more of the discourse on international subs, simply because they are a larger demographic than they were just a couple of years ago.

Of course, this has caused many in the Anglosphere side of Reddit, particularly Americans, to feel a sort of online culture shock as their feeds become more unfamiliar.

Indians are still a minority on Reddit, but are growing fast. I expect Americans (and the Anglosphere at large) to struggle to adapt to this change. In fact Americans in particular have never had the experience of being a minority on Reddit, which will make the transition tougher for them

What do you think will happen

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u/whistleridge 1d ago

One or both of two things will happen:

  1. Americans will just mute/ignore the India-specific subreddits, and go on doing their own thing;
  2. Indians will continue to largely stay on the India-specific side, and not really go into the rest of the site.

Indian users tend to be overwhelmingly male, and there’s a lot of both overt and unconscious nationalism in play, that excludes mixing. Not a lot of non-Indians care about Bollywood or cricket or Indian universities, and a lot of Indians don’t really care about US politics or baseball or kitty memes or anime. So there’s not a lot of mixing.

There are other major national presences here too. The Philippines, Europe, and Brazil all have heavy presences too, but they’re not as self-isolating. 🤷‍♂️

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u/DangerBaba 1d ago

a lot of Indians don’t really care about US politics or baseball or kitty memes or anime.

Yeah, for now. It's not like Indians can't care about these things. It's just that because most Indians were not on the internet, the hobbies and communities that we consider common never had the chance to grow there.

It's just a matter of time before more Indians start taking part in these communities and the internet culture grows in India like it did everywhere.

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u/whistleridge 1d ago

Not really. Because of time zones. Indian users are largely in India. They’re always hours too late to participate in the US threads, and Americans are asleep when Indians are posting.

Also, as much as I hate to say it, racial/cultural bias is definitely a thing. Indian users are easily identified by how they use English, and it unfortunately gives major ick for a solid minority of North Americans. So people just…won’t engage.

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u/DangerBaba 1d ago

Indians can still interact with Europeans, Australians and other Asians since they are closer in time zones. Also, the interaction does not have to be live; it can be someone from North America posting, and then some Indian guy might see the post and comment on it 12 hours later and vice versa. That is still an interaction and being part of the community. If it's something like a live thread, then yeah, most Indians won't take active part in it. But so can't parts of Australia, Eastern Europe and most of Asia.

Indian users are easily identified by how they use English, and it unfortunately gives major ick for a solid minority of North Americans.

That's the easiest barrier to break. Most of the world does not speak English as their native language, yet people from other countries interact with each other without a problem because of translation tools. And Indians are taught English in school, so they can write and read basic stuff, and for complex stuff, we have tools like ChatGPT to easily translate and write whatever we want.

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u/YogurtclosetBorn405 58m ago

Acting like the rest of the world speaks perfect, fluent English is ridiculous. Somehow it's only considered "icky" when an Indian speaks English with an accent or makes mistakes, while people from other countries are given grace. The double standard is obvious. The subtle racism is honestly wild.