The worst thing is, the comparison between reddit karma and reaction score is completely misplaced. Reddit karma isn't maligned because it's a numerical score added to posts. Virtually every forum or social media platform made now has some similar system in place. Karma is widely maligned because it's obtrusive, difficult to ignore, and arguably engineered to enforce maximum social conformity. If you drop under a certain score, you become unable to post in certain areas, and you'll likely find yourself surreptitiously banned from others. If you want to survive on reddit, you have to tailor your posts around the idea of continually farming karma, or you get run out.
Here, people get obsessed over reaction score and stickers for no other reason than they care about the people actually handing them out. You lose nothing from a negative score, nothing happens at all. In fact it's actually quite difficult to deliberately maintain a negative reaction score assuming you arent some weird troll or pedo. Users invest a piece of themselves into these little icons, absent any outward incentive to do so beyond internal social clout. If that isn't an indicator of excellent community health, I don't know what possibly could be.
Seriously Josh, I'm sure it's annoying dealing with people sperging about the reaction system, but at the end of the day they're doing it out of love for the thing YOU built. They're doing it because the community YOU built is so damn successful, people give a shit if they're a part of it or not.
