The Stackoverflow / Reddit Dilemma

A noob once said: “I have an idea, let me Start a Saas”

Gets slapped in the face by the Tax office for not founding an LLC first!

Gets slapped once again by the Data Privacy Act for using a generated privacy policy!

Saasers deal with bullying, rejection and unfair circumstances in every stage of their Saas life but not only in the real life.

Stackoverflow

2010 is when I started coding professionally, Stackoverflow was and is still now the mecca of the software developers herd.

If you asked a question in Stackoverflow and got a response, you are most definitely one of the lucky ones. This is what usually happens :

• A lot of downvotes.

• Rude people bullying you.

• Other senior developers projecting their personal insecurities or frustration with their colleagues on you.

• People having the audacity to tell you “Google it” as if you did not do it multiple times before bumping into Stackoverflow.

• Users forgetting that not everybody has the same learning curve or method as everybody else.

Stackoverflow is a helpful place for “read-only” people, but a toxic place for contributors and if this does not harm the platform, I don’t know what it will.

Reddit

For most Saasers, Reddit is a useful place to reach communities, it’s like a hive full of niches and its probably the most critical channel for the validation stage of your Saas. But it’s also a scary place too ..

I had to create 4 reddit accounts just to get one single feedback of my idea. Every time I posted something, I got bullied instantly because my account was new and “I am probably a bot” for certain redditors. I had to post on other groups and act normal for a month just so I can get to the point.

These are typical everyday scenarios :

• If you post something and the first comment is a negative one or a troll then better delete the post instantly because all the other comments will be a compilation of rudeness and bullying.

• Never ever promote anything there, it will never be good enough, because the moderators are probably promoters and they don’t want to have competition.

• You will be generally downvoted in reddit without an explanation, because people are just mean and it is just easy to downvote.

Reddit is just a dark, negative place of bullying and rejection. It is full of narcissist and selfish people that have this sense of fake power over you. Such places encourage the overall feeling of negativity and punishment behavior. Why ? Because it is easy to be mean and rude in the internet when no one knows you and why help when no one will recognize you too ?

I have seen everything evil in reddit. I have seen people complaining about Stackoverflow harshness and getting crushed with mean comments. I have seen photos of puppies getting downvoted in a puppy subreddit. I have contacted several moderators and got no response. I have posted my landing page and people opened my imprint, joked about my name and posted my personal address into the public.

I got bullied in reddit and this made me as everyone else a “passive-read-only-person”.

Conclusion:

The path of a bootstrapped indie hackers is full with obstacles, rejection and unfairness and the fact that they don’t have a safe place where they can communicate, ask for help or get feedback without being bullied and banned is scary.I wanted to name this article : “The death of online communities” first but I remembered indie hackers and how the people are nice there. If you are interested, you can join my Linkedin group here. I am trying to create a safe space where you can be a normal person and ask normal questions like everybody else in real life.