it’s helpful to know what I’ve already read. if it’s not a shit reply, it gets a bear. ofc, this means I read shit replies multiple times and get angry all over but at least I know what’s probably new (to me).
you get a bear, and you get a bear, and you get a bear, and everyone gets a bear.
Only on the news megathread, really.
Here’s my breakdown as one who mostly lurks, for whatever it’s worth: Aside from the news mega, I would guess maybe around 70% of threads I only give a once-over, or maybe twice, so there is really no point or need for a “read/unread” mark.
Some interesting ones, maybe 20% I’ll come back to to refresh and see what’s new, but usually not more than a few times and I can remember at first glance what I’ve read. Also there will still be lots of upbears on the stuff that was good or that I agreed with (I hand out upbears pretty uh… sigh… “liberally”) so it’s not hard to tell if I’ve read through a thread. I don’t usually sort by “new” so when I see the thread for the first time, it’s usually already been up for a bit.
On maybe 9% that are very interesting or are struggle sessions and whathaveyou will I keep refreshing. On those, using upbears as an “already read” marker would be helpful, but I still don’t want to just give them out totally freely, especially in struggle sessions for obvious reasons. And the very last 1% are ones I comment in which I will also refresh a lot but will depend on the context, where sometimes I will upbear nearly everyone especially if they respond to me, or in other cases if it’s argumentative, commenters definitely gotta earn it.
But the newsmega, when I read it, I almost want to be a completionist about it and will do exactly what you describe. When shit is going down, I will scroll through multiple times a day, even several times an hour if it’s hopping. I will upbear everything simply to know if I’ve already read it so I can scroll through it fast for anything new without having to even re-read at all. Only comments I really don’t like and would feel angry or dirty if I did, don’t actually get one. But I also go through phases where I don’t read the newsmega, or much of any news, just as a mental health break. And sometimes those breaks last longer than they should, and I feel bad for not keeping track of what’s happening, but that’s a different topic.
Thank you for reading my dissertation on my upbear habits, I’m sure you found it deeply enthralling.
Oh! One more thing to add. Back when the hexbear code made it so comments and upvotes updated in real time without needing a manual refresh, I would sometimes upvote and de-upvote a comment multiple times over like 10 or 20 seconds right after it appeared. If the comment was freshly made as I was reading the thread, I knew the person who made it was probably still looking at their screen with the comment they just made. I always hoped they’d see their upvote count flashing up and down repeatedly, and it would be like my way of saying “hi! I see you there! I’m here rn too. Nice comment.” I kinda miss that.