#3: I am a brothel keeper, AMA
#13: Waitress at high-end strip club
#15: "Evangelical pastor's kid". Inside: "I'm 27 now and agnostic bordering on atheist."
and so on, that's just on the first page just right now.
Of course, it's not necessarily bad to have these come up sometimes. It's just the amazing frequency with which they do, the universally supportive attitude of reddit, and their extreme desire to lynch and denigrate anyone who violates their universal support.
I don't understand why users shouldn't support someone of an unusual profession. Are they supposed to get all riled up because someone owns a brothel, or is a waiter in a strip club?
Hell, I remember a pedophile who recognised that his tendencies were harmful to children and had vowed never to act on them. Given that he can't change his condition, I think that was a brave and mature thing to do. While I obviously don't support pedophilia, I think that realizing that your desires can cause harm and restraining yourself from them is not something to condemn.
Apart from that, I find that it's really valuable to try and see things from someone's viewpoint, no matter who that person is. There have been many people doing IAmAs, and I find that critically deciding whether this person is someone to support or to condemn was eye-opening. Can you elaborate on why you find the community's support a bad thing?
I don't find support of these people to be a bad thing. I find the homogeneity and cruel, almost-textually-violent reactions of redditors to non-homogenous thought to be the bad thing. Look for AMAs where the subject is positive to religion ("IAmA practicing Mormon", "IAmA Catholic priest") or opposed to same-sex marriage, etc., and see how those turn out.
reddit is extremely antagonistic toward people who they consider unenlightened. There is a culture of incivility. It's not a numbers game -- it doesn't matter for instance that a larger portion of reddit is irreligious than religious -- it's just a matter of human decency, courtesy, open-mindedness and humility, which are almost non-existent on reddit.
I have seen quite a few religious IAmAs, and, as a rule, everyone was respectful. Reddit mostly has a problem with people who try to undermine rationality and critical thinking in the name of religion, not with religion itself. If you show me a post where redditors are being disrespectful to a (sane) IAmA-er, I will be very surprised.
In fact, I remember a recent post by a theologian, it had hundreds of comments and everyone (including the poster) loved it, it was very civilized and informative.
Of course, it's not necessarily bad to have these come up sometimes. It's just the amazing frequency with which they do, the universally supportive attitude of reddit, and their extreme desire to lynch and denigrate anyone who violates their universal support.