Reddit is a magical place. It is a social media forum that is better than any other social media forum. And if you didn’t know that before, Redditors will tell you that.
Reddit basically is a community where people can find others who have the same interests as them. The website has subreddits, which are spaces dedicated to one specific topic, science, a TV show, etc. On each subreddit, users can submit just about any topic for discussion, and other users can comment on the topic. If you enjoy the thread or someone’s comment, you can like it, or “up-vote” it.
There is pretty much a community for everything. In fact, when someone first creates a Reddit account, they are automatically subscribed to several subreddits. Unfortunately, those subreddits are mostly history, biographies, and science, which is enough to make any college student feel like they haven’t paid enough attention in their classes.
Even if you try to find some escape in the innocent forums of reality TV, you’ll find yourself trapped in an analysis of every single confessional and those references that you’re supposed to get -- but don’t. And god forbid you’re there in the off-season, going through all those “top 10 lists,” or “what is your favorite, etc?’” threads that have been made a million times, a really long analysis about something that happened three seasons ago, threads about a contestant’s tweets, and lame jokes.
I’ve been a Redditor for about a year now, and I mostly spend my time in the subreddits of my favorite reality TV competitions: Survivor, Big Brother, and RuPaul’s Drag Race. I’ve noticed several things in these specific forums. Reddit isn’t immune to circlejerking. It seems like whenever some interview drops or someone makes a thread that hasn’t been made in a while, everyone seems to change their previous opinion.
A very specific example is Nicole Franzel, the winner of Big Brother season 18. During the season, the majority of Reddit users disliked her and didn’t think she was a good player. Any comments defending her, including mine, were downvoted to below zero. Not long after the finale, Nicole did an interview explaining her game, and everything changed. There were several threads saying, “Nicole played a great game,” and “Am I the only one who thinks Nicole is underrated?”
Reddit may seem like a website for intelligent people, but if you look past all the large words and analyses, it’s just like any other social media site. It’s full of tired memes, circle jerks, and people who think their opinion is the correct opinion.
While Redditors enjoy saying that they are the best users on the entire Internet and that they are smarter and the true fans of something, the reality is, they’re just like any other person who has any sort of social media account.
They think they know everything, can change their mind at the drop of a hat, and while they might not be as petty, they can overreact when anyone dares to disagree with them.
