Web users have found Reddit.com, a popular entertainment and social news website, an all-encompassing example of how the rise of the Internet has led to an increased sense of online social connection and interaction. Founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, two University of Virginia graduates, Reddit essentially operates on user action and moderation through a bulletin board system, allowing users to upload, download and exchange messages, among other actions, by logging into the system. On average, the site has more than three billion page views a month.
Similar to many other popular websites focused on user-generated content, such as Tumblr, Reddit encourages users to plunge into the depths of the Internet (for better or for worse) through subcategories. For example, those seeking interesting, maybe even random, scientific matter can search through the subcategory, or “subreddit,” appropriately called “r/science.” Among “r/science,” users can browse through other subcategories, like “r/gaming,” “r/random” and “r/funny.” As with most material on the web, photos, .gifs and other types of digital media drive many subreddits, many of which are meme-styled.
Aside from the influx of joke photos and .gifs on the site, Reddit offers its users two subreddits that promote an interesting sense of community interaction as well as entertainment: r/AskReddit and r/IAMA, also known as Ask Me Anything, or AMA. Users post an assortment of questions and await responses that usually turn into long threads of comments. “Good” or “bad” comments or submissions, as deemed by the Reddit community, can be voted “up” or “down,” changing the comment or submission’s rank on the page. Such questions can range anywhere from “what is a common problem in your subculture that most people don’t realize exists?” to “what is the scariest story you can come up with that only takes one sentence to tell?” To say the least, much like Reddit itself, these questions and comments range from very questionable to very amusing.
Secondly, r/IAMA, or Ask Me Anything, allows users to learn about other people, ordinary or distinguished, through a collection of questions. Recently, Bill Gates completed an AMA session in which he answered questions dealing with his work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the future and past of technology and what he does for fun. When asked if he ever owned a Macintosh computer, Gates answered: “Microsoft does a lot of software for the Mac. I mostly use Windows machines but from time to time I have tried all of Apple’s products.”
Gates is not the only established figure to dedicate some time to answering questions through r/IAMA; last August, President Obama’s AMA generated more than twenty-thousand comments. Obama answered many serious questions regarding America’s economic future — a topic many Redditors wondered about since the website’s demographic mainly encompasses members of Generation Y. A recent law school graduate wrote in explaining that he, like many other graduate and undergraduate students, felt frustrated by the lack of job opportunities in this country and wondered how Obama’s planned response the issue. Obama later answered many informal questions that had little or nothing to do with U.S. politics. He said that the recipe for the White House beer would “be out soon! I can tell from firsthand experience, it is tasty.” Also, as a self-proclaimed “Bulls guy,” Obama said that [Michael] Jordan was his favorite basketball player.
Ask Me Anything also highlights those who live the farthest away from wealthy or glamorous lifestyles, causing usernames to seem less like avatars and more like real, emotional human beings. Most recently, a young adult shared his stories about living with his mother and stepfather who were meth cooks; a girl claimed that she gets “allergic” reactions to the cold and supported her case with photographic evidence (she put a pack of frozen green beans on her arms and shortly after developed very uncomfortable looking hives); and a college student who was born deaf and was raised by a deaf family gave users and people browsing the site just for fun some perspective about how others live. After all, r/IAMA’s tagline is “I Am A, where the mundane becomes fascinating and the outrageous suddenly seems normal.”
Redditors can also engage in gift exchanges. Although these users have never met each other (and most likely never will), they seem to like each other enough to send one another presents and packages. For example, according to statistics published on their site, last Christmas 57,400 people participated in Reddit’s annual “Secret Santa.” 55,322 presents were shipped and 45,966 people actually received gifts, an amount equal to approximately $1,996,904. Currently 8,059 Redditors are in the midst of a book exchange where approximately 1,616 books (about $39,668) have been shipped. Other gift exchanges include the “socks exchange,” the “decorate your dorm exchange” and the “holiday greeting card exchange.”
Those against the site have targeted its underlying, but nonetheless, strong current of misogyny, and argued that its subreddit “r/atheism” has strayed from its original identity as a platform for discussing atheistic beliefs to one that engages in single-minded attacks on other ideologies. Female users of the site have often felt that they have to conform to using “male usernames” to prevent harassment by many dogmatic male users. One female user reflects, “Most people on Reddit assume I am male until I make it a point to say otherwise. More often than not, once it’s discovered that I own a vagina I’m no longer taken seriously, my opinions are belittled and a slough [sic] of sexist and misogynist jokes/accusations get thrown my way.” Another user was told that she should be raped. Although digital harassment has been an ongoing problem as the web has become a primary mode of interaction, some users of the site have argued that these issues underscore the seemingly positive identity of the site, and by extension the online community.
Although some argue that spending time on digital media sites (and social media sites for that matter), like Reddit, Pinterest and Tumblr promote loneliness, it seems like there is something to be said for the sense of community (excluding the misogynists and extreme atheists) around which Reddit operates. After all, with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn becoming increasingly prominent modes of communication and interaction, why shouldn’t web users attempt to create an online forum for interesting discussions and lighthearted fun? However, if the site wants to increase its popularity from an Internet start-up to something much larger than it is today, that sense of community must transition from one that allows sexist and biased remarks to one that exercises positive values and respect for all of its users.
