I think everybody should visit Reddit, for one simple reason: knowing how to make a meme is hugely empowering.
I can’t think of many other skills that enable you to create something from scratch and reach as many people as knowing how to set up a simple rage post.
Just last week, I was able to come up with an idea and then photographed my cat in 2 ways. That photo was then seen by about 10,000 people in a couple hours and I got 2000 karma points.
Think about it: something I did reached 10,000 actual living people and had an impact (however small) on their life. That would never have been possible if I didn’t know how to procrastinate on the Internet.
Your point in the wider discussion aside (sure, population-wide imperatives are a dangerous rhetorical device), I actually think actively participating in the Reddit rage comic community can be a very valuable experience. It will teach you how to tell a story and communicate the humor of a situation using a simple image editor. You can watch the real failure-learning happen in [1]. Thinking your work is comedy gold and getting it downvoted into oblivion is a great, highly-concentrated learning experience.
English teachers in Japan are also using rage comics to supplement their English lessons and inspire their students to learn words so they can understand their classmates' jokes [2].
I can’t think of many other skills that enable you to create something from scratch and reach as many people as knowing how to set up a simple rage post.
Just last week, I was able to come up with an idea and then photographed my cat in 2 ways. That photo was then seen by about 10,000 people in a couple hours and I got 2000 karma points.
Think about it: something I did reached 10,000 actual living people and had an impact (however small) on their life. That would never have been possible if I didn’t know how to procrastinate on the Internet.