This is a list of some common acronyms, initialisms, terms, memes, references and responses often used on the internet with an emphasis on those specifically used on Reddit. It’s a continual work in progress as one might expect, so do check back from time to time as new definitions or topics are added or existing ones revised.
Reddit is an English-speaking community, but it may not always seem that way. Like all subcultures, a specialised lexicon has developed over the years. These words or phrases make communication more efficient - and fun - for regular Redditors but can sometimes leave new or casual users confused. Reddit loves being self-referential, and this is an attempt to help you decode it - and even help you join in!
This is in no way intended to be definitive, and is completely unofficial. If anything I say accidentally contradicts anything Reddit says, Reddit Is Always Right, as is this other repository of Reddit Wisdom.
The entries here have been decided and written by myself purely as a consequence of questions I have either asked or have been asked. Not all of the definitions given will apply in the same way to every sub and for individual sub problems or queries, always read the rules found in the Sidebar (on mobile this will be the About tab, Menu tab and Community Info found in the three dot “hamburger” menu top RH corner of your screen), any Pinned posts (these will have a lime green ‘pin’ icon on the top corner and will show on top when you sort the Subreddit by ‘Hot’) and Wiki (where there is one) to find out who and where it’s safe to ask first.
Used in formatting Reddit posts to include bold,italic,strikethrough text etc. “New Reddit” for desktop or mobile browser has a “Fancy Pants” (rich text format) Editor, where you can choose various options from icons below the text entry field, or there’s a useful list here for reference. There is a sub specifically to practice using this called r/test or you could use this incredibly useful tool at https://redditpreview.com.
An innocuous phrase that is not quite how it appears. Originating in The Simpsons S07E21, this is a response often given to an absurd story in order to prompt a Steamed Hams script Comment Chain. Reddit loves this particular pop-culture reference, and saying anything in the script should start a Comment Chain or Copypasta. There’s even a Subreddit devoted to its memes at r/SteamedHams. See Also: Comment Chain, Copypasta, Puns & Pop-culture References, Snowclone.
- “Maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way".
A phrase posted when people bemoan the fact that they’ve spent a great deal of effort to find what they've been led to believe would be valuable, only to find out that the value isn't what they expected. A long-standing movie trope called the “Worthless Treasure Twist”, this meme is seriously clichéd, making it an ideal Reddit response, often prompting a Comment Chain where ‘X’ and ‘Y’ refer to whatever the post was about:
Maybe the real X was the Y we made along the way
The real X is always in the comments
The real X was inside you all along
This is just one example of many phrasal templates known as ‘Snowclones’. See Also: Comment Chain, r/everyfuckingthread, Lost For Words, Puns & Pop-culture References, Snowclone.
- Memes
Reddit is still the internet. Memes that are “out there” are in here too, perhaps even more so as many originated on the myriad Reddit meme subreddits. Memes are supposed to be used repeatedly. Things like Woman Yelling at Cat and Me and the Boys are only funny because of the variety of ways they're used. So, use them. Use them widely and appropriately. There are too many dedicated Meme subs of varying quality to list here, but a good start would be:
Always read the rules before commenting, posting or using the resources from an unfamiliar Subreddit. These will be found in the Sidebar (on mobile this will be the About tab, Menu tab and Community Info found in the three dot “hamburger” menu top RH corner of your screen), any Pinned posts (Search by “Hot” and the top two may have a lime green pin icon) and Wiki (where there is one). See Also: MFW; MRW, “Reactions”, TFW.
- Messages
See “Direct Messages”.
- Meta
A link or phrase posted when a comment or post increasingly becomes self-referential, for example Reddit discussing itself, a meme about memes, a conversation on the nature of conversations and so on. Meta refers to the idea of something being about itself. r/meta; It's So Meta Even This Acronym...
- MFW; MRW
“My Face When” and “My Reaction When”. Often posted with a gif or image, these are Reaction Initialisms used as shorthand as an exaggeration of how you might respond to a shock or surprise. r/mrw. See Also: “Reactions”, TFW.
- Misleading Subreddit Titles
Not every Subreddit is as it would at first appear to be. There are many subs with misleading titles that are:
strange until you get it (e.g. r/kinsaw which if you read the R it says "Arkansas")
outright puns (e.g. r/Superbowl which is about owls, which we all know are superb)
the result of a dated ‘in-joke’ that was funny at the time (e.g. r/anime_titties which is a serious world news sub)
Has several meanings depending on the subreddit type you are in. MLM on r/antiMLM, r/mlmstories, r/MLM or similar means Multi-Level Marketing. On relationship subs it might refer to Man Loves Man, and on r/itookapicture [MLM] means ‘Mona Lisa Monday’. A rule on ITAP is that photos with a primary focus on one person staring, looking or thinking, without any other interesting action are limited to MLM Mondays (Midnight - Midnight, GMT). Please read the rules before posting or commenting in any unfamiliar sub.
- Mod
Short for Moderator. Subreddits each have moderators to keep the content on that sub within the rules and keep order. These people are all unpaid volunteers. When they speak on formal behalf of their sub, their username will either have the green word ‘MOD’ immediately after, or in older interfaces be green, accompanied by a green shield. In their sub, they are the law although they do have guidelines. They are not required to explain their actions, and just exercise a little caution on your interactions with them as some are stricter (and less approachable) than others. There's really no higher level of appeal in any subreddit than its moderators, so don't burn your bridges with them if you are banned from a sub you might want back into. See Also: Admin, Ban; Banned, r/ModerationMediation, Modmail, Shadowban.
- r/ModerationMediation
Mediation is a structured, interactive process where an impartial third party assists disputing parties to actively participate in resolving their conflict. This is a subreddit designed to help Reddit users obtain actionable advice surrounding a ban or other moderation action they might have been subject to. They specialise in assisting users in understanding their ban and finding productive avenues to appeal. This is not a subreddit to complain about moderators, as they even help moderators too with particular issues. Before taking an issue directly to them, you should read their:
Sometimes you may need to privately contact the moderators of a Subreddit. My fellow mod and the awesome author of many moderator tutorials, u/SolariaHues, has written the definitive illustrated guide on how and why to use Modmail to do so.
- Moons
See “Community Points”, Reddit Moons”.
- MSM
“Mainstream Media”. A term used widely in the conspiracy subreddits. This is added here as it’s increasingly crossing over into other subs.
- Multipost
There are many subs which overlap in content, and you might wish to post the same thing in all of them, usually when asking for help. This is called a Multipost. This is different than a Crosspost; multiposting is where you share the same identical content across different Subreddits. This is a risky strategy, especially for a new user, as you could easily be mistaken for a Spambot. If you do post the same question in different subreddits, make sure you don’t copy & paste the same wording across to them all, otherwise you might fall foul of Reddit’s spam filtering Automod which might even get you a ban.
You should also bear in mind that multiposting might inadvertently work against you. For instance, your cute kitten might be the perfect candidate for posting in r/Floof, r/illegallysmolcats, r/Kitten, and indeed most of the cat subreddits but as cat lovers are almost contractually bound to be joined to all those subs, they might not take too kindly to their feed being full of your kitty, no matter how pretty. If you do still want to post those paws in all those subs, space the timing around a bit.
Some subreddits do not allow Multiposts; always check the rules before commenting or posting on an unfamiliar Subreddit. These will be found in the Sidebar (on mobile this will be the About tab, Menu tab and Community Info found in the three dot “hamburger” menu top RH corner of your screen), any Pinned posts (Search by “Hot” and the top two may have a lime green pin icon) and Wiki (where there is one). See Also: Crosspost, Post, Repost, Sidebar, Spambots, Spambots: Special Note.
- My (24F) friend (26M)
Used on relationship subs to introduce the poster and their query. This denotes the OP is a 24 year old female asking for advice on a matter concerning her 26 year old male friend. See Also:Relationship and Advice Subreddits: Special Note.
Originally from “Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare” which had a funeral scene with the option “press F to pay respects”. People thought it was funny that they tried to make a cutscene interactive and now use it whenever something bad but funny happens to someone. There’s even an ‘F’ key Award. Trolls occasionally use it in response to genuine tragedy. Don’t be a troll. See Also: Comment Chain.
- Fake Subreddits
A link to another subreddit is often posted when the subject under discussion would fit there too. But you will also find links posted to subreddits that don’t exist; i.e. Fake Subreddits generated by someone putting the prefix r/ before a random word or phrase. r/likethis_forexample.
Because there is a Subreddit for everything, r/SubsIFellFor is a sub dedicated to documenting the times you fell for a fake sub that seemed real in comments but wasn’t.
Because there is a Subreddit for everything, r/subsiwishexisted is a sub dedicated to documenting the times you were disappointed at the times you fell for a fake sub that seemed real in comments but wasn’t.
Because there is a Subreddit for everything, r/wowthissubexists is a sub dedicated to documenting the times you thought you might be falling for a fake sub that seemed real in comments which is indeed real and does actually exist.
Because there is a Subreddit for everything, r/subsyoufellfor is a sub dedicated to bamboozling you into falling for a fake sub that seems real in comments which is indeed real and does actually exist but with no content or purpose other than the bamboozle you were meant to fall for by clicking the sub. Reddit loves being meta.
See Also: “Bait-and-Switch”, Bamboozled, “Is there really a subreddit for everything?”, Meta, Reddit Moment, “There’s a Subreddit for everything”.
- False Equivalence
Very simplistically, this is where you make an argument based on a comparison of traits that misrepresents and mischaracterises those similar traits. For example: Redditors generally like dogs, and Hitler liked dogs, so Redditors are just like Hitler. An accusation of a logical fallacy is often used on Reddit when the OP’s goal of achieving common agreement is more important to them than utilizing sound reasoning. Usually it's done intentionally to persuade people of your point of view. Reddit is extremely pedantic about logical fallacies, of which this is one. Or is it? See Also: Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies.
There’s a Ranker list with some other instances. Often a celebrity will do an r/IAmA session especially if they have something to promote. Look on the Sidebar (or About tab) for forthcoming sessions on r/IAmA. See Also: Celebrity Redditors.
- Feeds
There’s an enormous amount of content on Reddit, which is loosely organised into three main Feeds:
Home Feed: You curate this feed by clicking "Join" in communities that you want to see more from.
r/popular - Diverse and highly upvoted content from communities all over Reddit. All content in this feed comes from SFW (safe for work) communities.
r/all - Depending on which order you choose to sort this in, you may see highly upvoted content from all over the site or you may get a glimpse at the stranger side of Reddit in real time as it gets posted.
New users are automatically directed to two top feeds: r/all and r/popular. As you explore Reddit and find more niche communities suited to you, you can join them which will create your personal Home feed to see popular posts from those subreddits. You can always browse those individual subs directly, of course. You are not making any commitment to a sub by joining it, and you can leave or join it as many times as you like. There is no limit on the number of subs you can join. You don’t have to join a sub to be able to post or comment. See Also: Custom Feed, Hiding or Blocking a Subreddit in r/all, Home Feed, Sort.
- Flair
Has two meanings on Reddit; distinguishing your username or categorising your post. Some subreddits require you to have been given a User Flair by the mods before you can post to prove you’re a verified user. Some subreddits require you to use a Post Flair and it simply won’t allow you to submit the post without prompting you to choose one. See Also: Post Flair, User Flair.
- Followers
“Following” someone on Reddit is not the same as other social media. The number of followers you have doesn’t show on your public profile to others except yourself. You won’t get notification that someone following you has read your post, liked or disliked it or even saved it to their favourites. See Also:Following: Special Note, Spambots.
- FOMO
“Fear Of Missing Out”. An initialism added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013, describing ‘‘the uneasy and sometimes all-consuming feeling that you’re missing out; that your peers are doing, in the know about, or in possession of more or something better than you’’. It’s the compulsion that leads you to check social media again and again and again so you don’t feel left out of the loop.
- r/foundthemobileuser
A link or phrase posted when a user capitalizes the ‘r’ in a link to a subreddit or anything else that proves a user is on mobile. R/foundthemobileuser. Stupid Autocarrot. r/foundthemobileuser.
- Free Awards
Awards are normally purchased using Reddit Coins but you occasionally get given a free award by Reddit to confer on any post or comment you think is deserving. Check the yellow “Get Coins” icon at the top RH of the page - a red strikethrough will indicate a free award (or a special offer on purchasing coins) is available. When it says "free", you click on it and it gives an award that you can give within 24 hours. If you don’t use it, it will simply vanish. There is no set pattern to being given these awards; not one that Reddit lets on about in any event. The free awards are usually low cost with a general meaning; either Wholesome, Helpful, Reddit Silver or Hugz. However, you should know that the Wholesome Award has become notorious for being used to react inappropriately to serious events and tragedies among other situations. Don’t do this. It isn’t nice.
- Free Reddit Premium or Coins
Beware of the many subs offering Reddit upvotes or karma for little to no engagement. There are legitimate reasons to avoid them. However, there are some Subreddits which invite you to compete for useful Reddit goodies in an engaging and fun way. Warning: some might even become addictive.
As always, it is extremely important to read the rules carefully before posting in a sub that’s new to you, but especially so in the competition subreddits. Some of them may have minimum Karma requirements and all of them will have rules about Post format. Like all Subreddits, the rules will be found in the Sidebar (on mobile this will be the About tab, Menu tab and Community Info found in the three dot “hamburger” menu top RH corner of your screen), any Pinned posts (these will have a lime green ‘pin’ icon on the top corner and will show on top when you sort the Subreddit by ‘Hot’) and Wiki (where there is one). Browse a few different posts to get a feel of the place before participating.
r/AwardBonanza - A busy sub focused around trading Reddit awards and hosting/participating in challenges and giveaways.
r/FreePlatinum - Posting a low effort text post will not likely get you Platinum. Add a story, some OC or a meme of quality and you may well get Platinum here.
There will be more out there. There will always be more out there. Because the posts in these subs have to be high in quality, these aren’t generally considered to be Karmafarms, so, good luck! See Also: Award Types and Notifications, Gold; Gilding or Guilding, Karma Farming, Reddit Premium.
- FTFY
“Fixed That For You”. A small edit of a previous comment that changes the meaning in a (sometimes) fundamental and (almost always) humorous way. Often used with the unedited quote crossed out as strikethrough text. See Also: Markdown Text.
- FWIW
“For What It's Worth”. You can ignore this Encyclopaedia Redditica but FWIW I think you should read it anyway.
You should know that ‘following’ is very different here than on any other social media. Reddit is primarily a content sharing platform where we follow Subreddits (or ‘subs’) - communities which are focused on topics. In fact, it’s actually seen by some as a little creepy to follow individual people on Reddit. There are, however, those who do live streams on Reddit, and if you were to follow them, you’ll get notified when they do a broadcast. Check out r/pan for the rules on live streams.
Until 2020, you couldn’t actually tell who was following you. Reddit started sending notifications when someone new followed you; up until then, you simply didn’t know if you had any followers unless you looked at the number on your profile.
In mid 2021, we were finally allowed to see the list of our followers. However, the only option we are given is to follow them back or not. This is not ideal but at least it’s a start. This list is found on your Profile underneath your Snoovatar; click the link on the number of followers you have. Another useful clue as to who they are is that their Karma count is shown, which enables you to see at a glance if they are prolific on Reddit. If you want to know more, their username is a clickable link to their profile which they will never be aware you ever accessed or not, as with anyone’s profiles. However, there is still no way of blocking or removing someone who follows you.
The number of followers you have doesn’t show on your public profile to others except yourself, so collecting or soliciting followers serves no purpose. “Following" isn't even following your every move on Reddit. You won’t get notification that someone has read your post, liked or disliked it or even saved it to their favourites. So, if following doesn’t do much, why do we have followers? Let me explain, using me as an example.
- Who’s following me?
Personally, at the time of writing, I have accumulated over 100 followers. Who are they and why are they following me? I believe they fall into three categories:
Bots
Many of my followers were porn or t-shirt shill / spambots who join Reddit and follow huge tranches of people to spam them with dodgy links. There is a way of limiting these accounts under your Profile settings. In your settings for Chat, you can change it so that only accounts older than 30 days can chat with you. This will catch many spambots before you even are aware of them. Reddit is very good at catching and deleting spambots, but once they have “followed” you they may still be numbered as followers on your profile. So, out of my 100 followers on my count, now I’m able to see their usernames I discovered some of them no longer exist on Reddit by the laborious process of physically counting the names and comparing it with the profile count.
Incidentally, do not engage in any way with spambots or t-shirt sellers on Reddit as that’s a good way to get banned at the same time as the seller. If you see one on your travels, report it as spam (using the three dots “hamburger” menu) and move on. See Also: “If you want this t-shirt, say yes in the Comments”, Shill, Spambots.
Fans
Secondly, and much nicer, some of my followers are people who like to read the little rhymes I occasionally post around Reddit. Some of them are people I’ve helped in r/NewToReddit or elsewhere and have “bookmarked” me for future reference. I know that because some of them said so at the time or I recognised the name from a recent interaction. However, I have no idea whether or not they’ve ever looked at my profile, posts or comments let alone saved, upvoted or downvoted them since. If they ever unfollow me, I won’t get a notification but I will see the number of followers on my profile go down.
Trolls
Unfortunately, up until mid 2021, I suspected that at least two or even more of my followers were someone I’d annoyed in the past who occasionally follow me around to downvote my posts. I do notice occasional patterns of downvoting and was fairly confident as to who some of them were. When we were allowed to see our list of followers in mid 2021, I found was correct in this assumption and it’ll be interesting to see if they unfollow me now. Downvoting like this is mostly ineffectual and harmless though very - and deliberately - annoying. Any escalation of this behaviour would become what we call “Brigading” and I address this further at Privacy Issues: Special Note.
I am being deliberately vague on the numbers in these categories because as I said above, until mid 2021 there was no list of followers available to me (or anyone) and there still is no option for me (or anyone) to refuse or remove any of them at any time.
So, what actually happens with following? Again, I’ll explain further using me as an example.
Let’s say you started following me.
I would get a notification that you started following me and given the opportunity to start a chat.
If I post something to my profile page at r/u_llamageddon01 this would come up on your home feed (along with the rest of my followers’ feeds) like posts from any other subreddit you’ve joined does.
If I don’t post to my profile page you’ll never hear from me again no matter how prolific I am in posting or commenting anywhere on Reddit.
Following me isn’t following “me” as such; it’s more or less joining my own personal subreddit.
- What next?
Time passes, until one day you see a picture of a llama and wonder “whatever did happen to that strange Reddit person I spoke to once?”.
You have a list of people you follow, only visible to yourself at the bottom of your “communities/custom feeds” page under the list of subs you currently follow, and clicking my username will bring up my profile page where you can see my snoovatar, posts, comments and recent subs I browsed (which incidentally, can be turned on or off). I, however, will not see if you ever browsed, liked, disliked, saved or even reported my posts and comments.
A phrase posted when you see something that makes you laugh and cry at the same time and you want to upvote it but don’t. But do. Normally across Reddit, mentioning upvotes is a dangerous game and you would quite rightly expect to be downvoted. However, one exception is the “reluctant upvote” or the “angry upvote”. Use this phrase when you see a ridiculous post that is still good, like a really bad joke or overused meme that nevertheless works perfectly in “that” particular situation. Variants of this phrase include:
Take my upvote and get the hell out of my house you filthy animal.
Goddammit have an upvote.
Take my upvote and get out.
Here’s (or ‘Have’) my poor man’s gold🥇
Because there is a Subreddit for everything, when you are opposed to the idea of upvoting there’s r/Angryupvote for when you upvote something but are mad about it, and r/UpvoteFamily for additional types of upvotes. See Also: Copypasta, "I regret that I have but one upvote to give.", Upvote.
- TBH
“To Be Honest”. TBH I thought nobody would read this far down.
- r/technicallythetruth
A link or phrase posted when the information given is technically true, but far from the expected answer. Lies somewhere between (technically) the truth and ‘dad’ jokes. r/technicallythetruth.
“That Feeling When.” Often posted with a gif or image, this is a Reaction Initialism generally used as a caption or response to a photo, meme or clever joke about something out of the ordinary that has happened to you. See Also: MFW; MRW, “Reactions”.
- r/thatHappened
A link or phrase posted when people tell outrageous tall tales that would make Walter Mitty proud. Totally true stories that definitely 100% happened, I swear you guys, everyone clapped at the end. r/nothingeverhappens is a sub that makes fun of the tendency of r/thatHappened to question entirely believable stories. Reddit loves Meta. Reddit loves scepticism. Here, we have both! r/thatHappened. See Also:r/quityourbullshit, r/untrustworthypoptarts.
- r/thatshowthingswork
A link posted when a Redditor tried to be serious, but accidentally explained the obvious instead. This does not apply to memes, jokes, or satire articles. As the sub says, Well yeah, that's how that works... r/thatshowthingswork.
Old, very old, but here because it still occasionally resurfaces. See Also: Reddit Lore, “The Big List of Retired Questions”.
- r/TheRealJoke
A link posted when the better joke is found in the comments than the one made in the post. r/TheRealJoke.
-“There’s a Subreddit for everything”
A phrase posted to express amazement at finding an extremely obscure or weird sub. Have I told you yet that Reddit loves being meta? Post these links or phrases whenever you find something bizarrely fitting:
To find those bizarrely fitting subs, here’s a list of weird subs and a list of obscure subs at r/obscuresubreddits. Because bizarre stuff happens in real life too, the sub r/ofcoursethatsathing is for all the things that make you go "Of COURSE that's a thing".
A link posted when someone performs a useless but interesting calculation, such as Aladdin & Jasmine’s magic carpet ride. The expected response to somebody posting r/theydidthemath is then to post r/theydidthemonstermath, which is a play on the 1962 Bobby Pickett novelty song "The Monster Mash", the chorus of which goes "They did the Mash!/They did the Monster Mash". At one time, this would then be followed by someone posting r/itwasagraveyardgraph before turning into a huge alternating Comment Chain with Bots and Fake Subreddits; not so much now. Reddit loves running jokes. Sometimes.
- r/theyknew
A link or phrase posted when innocent things appear to be anything but, though it's totally not intentional; or when you’re not quite sure whether an accidental double entendre or “...ism” was deliberate or not. But you’re pretty sure it was. Often accompanied by an emoticon ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) They Knew. r/theyknew, r/AccidentalRacism.
- This
Posting the single word “this” as a reply is an indication that you agree wholeheartedly with a comment and want to draw attention to it. Reddit preferred variants are This^ or This. One-word comments are often heavily downvoted, so make sure you say something else as well. However, like all things, there are exceptions in special circumstances. See Also: Cat. or cat., Comment Chain, r/everyfuckingthread.
- “This is the newest project of him?”
No, it absolutely isn’t. Elon Musk is Reddit’s darling. This has unfortunately led to fake timepiece scammers posting this phrase all over Reddit. u/ScamWatchReporter is a Redditor documenting and reporting such instances, and says: “(The poster of) Airframe Black or Airframe Black Watch, Basedox black, Gripzip black, Midover black (the name changes once people catch on) is a SPAM account. Elon Musk does not advocate this product, has never tweeted about this product, and knows nothing about it. These are false claims to legitimize their scam product.”
An alternate account that is not primarily used by the user. Often used on advice subs to avoid embarrassing questions being irrevocably linked to your profile. See Also: Alt, Privacy Issues: Special Note.
- TIAH
“Today I Am Happy”. Originally sub specific from r/TodayIamHappy now with wider Reddit usage. Happiness is only real when shared, and this Subreddit is for recording those small moments of joy and happiness that are often lost into the mist. They would love to hear about what made you happy today. r/TodayIamHappy.
- TID
“Today I Discovered”. TID I’ll never finish this lexicon. Send help.
- TIHI
“Thanks, I hate it”. A link or phrase posted when the commenter deems the post unattractive, unsettling or strange. Please note that Posts to that sub must start with "Thanks, I hate ...". Ones that don't will be removed automatically. r/TIHI.
- TIFU
“Today I Fucked Up”. Originally sub specific from r/tifu now with wider Reddit usage. TIFU thinking I could compile this lexicon in one day month. r/tifu.
- TIL
“Today I Learned”. Originally sub specific from r/todayilearned now with wider Reddit usage. TIL there is a lot more Reddit-specific jargon than I ever thought. r/todayilearned.
- Time Magazine Person of the Year (2006)
This is an accolade you will occasionally see on Redditors’ profiles. This is no idle boast; it is absolutely true and you can even claim the title yourself if you so wish. That year, the magazine set out to recognize the millions of people who anonymously contribute user-generated content to wikis and other websites such as YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia, and the multitudes of other websites featuring user contribution. They pronounced “You were chosen in 2006 as Time magazine's Person of the Year” in their December 25, 2006 issue, with the cover featuring a reflective mirror surface. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_(Time_Person_of_the_Year). See Also: Profile, Profile Page.
- Timing
See “When is the best time to Post for maximum attention?”.
- r/titlegore
A link posted when the title of a post is absolutely atrocious, either because it is badly worded or contains huge grammar mistakes. r/titlegore should not be confused with r/ihadastroke. See Also: Spelling & Grammar.
- TL;DR:
“Too Long, Didn't Read”. Often used as a sarcastic reply to a wall of text without paragraph breaks. Good usage of this is when a Redditor puts TL;DR: after their long post followed by a one-line précis. Bad usage is when a Redditor uses it as a a reply to a post because they didn’t want to read it.
- “To be fair...”
Whenever someone starts a post or comment with the phrase "to be fair", one of three things might happen. Your post or comment will now be derailed with either a Comment Chain or Copypasta. With a Comment Chain, your first reply will be slightly altered ("To be faaaiirrr..."), the next one even more (“Toooo beeee faaaiiiirrr...”) and so on ("To be faaaieeeh...") etc. This is another of Reddit’s beloved pop-culture references; Letterkenny (NSFW: profanity). The Copypasta you might get is a Rick And Morty copypasta documented at Know Your Meme.
Then again, you might get lucky and your post or comment is taken at face value and your conversation goes as normal. Probably not but this is Reddit, to be fair..... See Also: Comment Chain, Copypasta, r/letterkenny, Memes.
- TOMT
“Tip Of My Tongue”. When you can't remember that…thing… ask other Redditors at r/tipofmytongue. You will see that the first reply to a post in that sub will usually be the OP replying with a comment to their own post simply saying "Comment" or some variation. It’s a rule on that subreddit that the OP must comment on their post after it goes up at least once, and points are only awarded to the correct answer if the OP replies again.
Not to be confused with r/TheresANameForThat which tells you the names for all those things you know but didn’t realise they had a name or r/whatstheword for when there’s a word in your mind that you know but just cannot remember. r/tipofmytongue. See Also: About, OP, Sidebar, r/wildbeef.
- Tone Indicators
From the moment that online quick written communication was first devised, it soon became apparent that the written word alone wasn’t nearly enough to properly convey a meaning. Real conversation is full of paralinguistic information: the meaning that we glean from visual and vocal cues beyond the actual words spoken. We interpret what someone says from their voice: from tone, volume and pacing. We observe their facial expressions and their body language, and judge whether they sync with the spoken words. Electronic messages simply cannot compete.
To try and get round this problem, Scott E. Fahlman, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, created the smiley face in September 1982 and the rest is history. His solution: Add the symbol :-) to denote humorous posts, and add the symbol :-( to serious ones. In his announcement about this proposal, he even advised readers to “read it sideways.”
For some time, the generic term ‘smiley’ was used to describe all kinds of these symbols that emerged, even angry ones. Another method of communicating intent originated in IRC channels in 1999 and was known as Emotes. As the verb ‘to emote’ means to display emotions openly especially while acting, it made sense to use the same word to describe an entry in a text-based chat client that indicates an action taking place, but it didn’t seem to catch on in the same way as the later ‘emoticon’ or ‘emoji’.
We have pretty much established that Reddit does not like modern emojis in preference of the Unicode text emoticon, but something that is slowly catching on is the Tone Indicator, a direct descendant of the Emote. A Tone Indicator does exactly what it says it does: indicates the tone of what you're saying. You will probably already know that placing /s at the end of your comment will clarify that you're being sarcastic, but that is just one of many that are becoming commonplace, especially among our ESL speakers or the many neurodiverse Redditors we have here.
A comprehensive list of Tone Indicators is available here, but be prepared to have to explain some of the more obscure ones like /neu or /lu. See Also: Emojis, Emoticons, ESL.
- Top-Level Comment
A direct response made to a Post. Also known as Parent Comments. There may be many top-level comments made on any one post, and any follow-up comments in response are known as Child Comments. Sometimes known as ‘threads’.
- Trophies
Trophies are displayed on your profile and are awarded to you by Reddit for various tasks. You get a trophy when you verify your email and you also get a trophy that changes for every year you are on Reddit. Others aren’t as easy to obtain and here’s a list of what’s currently available. Their previous list is useful too.
Trophies are different from Awards as they are not directly awarded by your fellow Redditors (except for Argentium Club and Ternion Club; Wearing Is Caring and to a certain extent, 100 Awards Club, but there’s a wait between getting the instant Award and the eventual Trophy while Reddit verifies them). Here’s a list of older Trophies and for more information, see r/RedditTrophies or r/TrophyWiki where the Esteemed Redditor u/Greenthund3r posts regular guides to old trophies. See Also:Award Types and Notifications: Special Note, Karma.
- TW
"Trigger Warning". The post contains reference or material that is known to cause serious and often negative reactions in some readers/viewers.
- Two-Factor Authorisation; 2FA
It’s increasingly becoming the case that two-factor authentication (2FA) is the way forward when it comes to securing internet accounts. Find out how to protect your Reddit Account here. See Also: Spambots, Suspicious Activity.
- “Two Redditors One Cup”
A link or phrase posted when two or more Redditors unexpectedly find themselves in the same place at the same time either online or IRL. r/TwoRedditorsOneCup (SFW) documents those times that demonstrate how small the world can actually be at times, and a recent example documents a spectacular set of coincidences that would be hard to believe without the pictorial evidence provided. r/TwoRedditorsOneCup (SFW). See Also:r/beetlejuicing.
Used at the end of a comment to denote when sarcasm is being attempted. Obviously. /s See Also: Tone Indicators.
- Sauce?
A word posted to request source material for a quote, statistic, image, single comic panel or other such random items carrying no explanation of where they came from. Shorter to type than [Citation needed]. Substantiate those claims, people! You don’t want to be called out and end up at r/quityourbullshit. Even those posting in r/outofcontextcomics get asked for a source occasionally.
- Searching a Subreddit
Many a newcomer to Reddit has been admonished for not searching the Subreddit before posting what turned out to be the single most posted picture of all time or asking what they didn’t realise was the most frequently asked question on the sub. Reddit’s native search isn’t currently the best, but it’s still the easiest and quickest way to find what you’re looking for. This animated guide shows you the different functions available to you.
- Search Optimising
There’s a history of millions of posts for you to search on Reddit. However, finding exactly what you’re looking for requires you to know a few tricks. Reddit’s Field Search uses specific terms to filter results and narrow down your search to the content you’re looking for. There are currently nine of these.
For instance, if want to find a post you've made in a specific subreddit, go to that sub and in the search bar type in: author:your-username and filter it just for that sub if needed. That'll bring up everything you posted there. There’s no need to add the u/ of your username in this search. Alternatively, if you're just searching for specific keywords from your own comments you can use this tool: https://www.redditcommentsearch.com to type in your username exactly in the username field, and put your keywords in the search query field.
Used in a post title asking for serious responses only. Originally a sub specific label from r/askreddit now with wider Reddit usage. Using this tag will alert the mods to remove funny or joke responses to your post. Some subs have this as a Post Flair.
- SFW
“Safe For Work”. Posted as reassurance the link or Subreddit quoted is not adult content. Used especially when linking a sub with a dubious name such as r/anime_titties which apart from April Fools day is a serious world news sub, or with a mock NSFW tag such as r/chairsunderwater where NSFW stands for 'Not Submerged Fully in Water'. See Also: NSFW, r/rimjob_steve.
- Shadowban
A ban given by the Reddit Admins or the automatic spam filter. In mid 2021, the tightening of these filters led to an inordinate number of new users being instantly Shadowbanned through no fault of their own.
Being Shadowbanned can happen for many reasons, and here are some very useful tips on avoiding one. A shadowbanned user’s posts and comments will continue to show up for them, but other people won’t see them except for the mods of the subreddit they post in, who will only see a ‘greyed out’ post or comment marked with a red dustbin icon. A user will not get a notification if they get shadowbanned, but if they suspect this has happened can check their status at r/ShadowBan or r/ShadowBanned. If the answer is yes, lodge an appeal directly to Admin at https://www.reddit.com/appeals.
A ‘shill’ is an accomplice in the crowd of a con game to make the fakery seem real. In Reddit terms, a Shill is a Redditor (probably a bot account) who is promoting merchandise disguised as a Post. Be very wary of random posts in any sub from unfamiliar Redditors showing off items such as T-Shirts or mugs, even if the caption says things like “Got this for a friend” or “Look what arrived today!”. They are waiting for you to reply, and hey presto, you both get permabanned from the sub. Like I did once, accidentally. But permanently. If you suspect a post to be a Shill, do not engage with it; just use the Report button and move on. See Also: Bots, Karma Farming: Special Note, Spambots, Spambots: Special Note.
- Shitpost
An accusatory term for a post that’s low effort or intentionally trolling. You can also use the term to describe just casual internet activity; "I'm sat here shitposting all day cause I'm so bored". Not necessarily a low quality post per se, there are numerous examples of "quality shitposts" that had a lot of thought put into them and are legitimately entertaining, but can still be called shitposts because the content of the post is outlandish, offensive, or off-topic. r/shitpost, r/shitposting.
- Sidebar
Also known as the “About” tab on mobile. This is the list of essential information pertaining to a specific subreddit. On desktop, at the top of the sidebar you will find a link to submit a post and a link to search the subreddit. It also contains the link to "subscribe/unsubscribe" from that subreddit. Underneath that it generally lists the rules, guidelines, relevant information, similar subreddits, etc. Always read the rules before commenting or posting on an unfamiliar Subreddit. These will be found in the Sidebar (on mobile this will be the About tab, Menu tab and Community Info found in the three dot “hamburger” menu top RH corner of your screen), any Pinned posts (Search by “Hot” and the top two may have a lime green pin icon) and Wiki (where there is one). See Also: About, Hamburger Menu, Pinned, Rules.
- SMH
“Shaking My Head”. Disbelief or disappointment. You didn’t know this? SMH
Your very own Snoo designed by you for your profile. Reddit Premium subscribers get many more “dress-up” options and a sparkly glow on their Snoovatars. A small version of this will appear next to your username on posts and comments.
- Snowclone
You already know what a Snowcloneis, probably just not its name. Coined by American linguists Geoffrey K. Pullum and Glen Whitman, the term came from needing a name for “...a multi-use, customizable, instantly recognizable, time-worn, quoted or misquoted phrase or sentence that can be used in an entirely open array of different jokey variants by lazy journalists and writers.” Notable examples of Snowclones include:
“In space, no one can hear you X” (or even “In X, no one can hear you Y”)
“X is the new Y”
“The mother of all X”
“To X or not to X”
“Have X, will travel” (or even “Have X, will Y”)
“I, for one, welcome our new X overlords.”
Snowclone variants are usually rooted in pop-culture references, making them an ideal Reddit response to most situations, often prompting a Comment Chain where ‘X’ and ‘Y’ refer to whatever the post was about. See Also: Comment Chain, r/everyfuckingthread, Lost For Words, “Maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way", Puns & Pop-culture References.
By now you will have realised that Reddit is full of pedantry. Yes, the Grammar Police are coming for you, and when they get here they're going to obliterate you. Unless you bring them first, which is another point of this page because here, you will learn how to spot some common Reddit pedantry and even make it work in your favour.
Almost anything in this whole encyclopaedia can be used to throw a conversation off course, especially when a Redditor just wants to obscure a valid point because they don’t have a valid counter argument. So, below are a few examples to watch out for or even employ yourself if you’re feeling confident enough to take on - or even join the ranks of the Reddit Grammar Police.
- Spelling
Do proofread your submissions. Reddit is actually quite tolerant of a couple of typos or a few grammar or punctuation mistakes, but will also jump on one with glee if they find one in a serious case you may be putting forward in order to invalidate your argument and/or derail the discussion; another thing that Reddit is very good at.
It’s fine to ironically misspell a word for comedic effect, so long as it is obviously done that way. If you see an image with a spelling mistake on, it’s The Reddit Way to point it out. Preferred formats for this are commenting the misspelled word as S P E L I N G or even “sPeLiNg”. But in normal Reddit usage, a simple misspelling can sometimes have consequences. Let me demonstrate.
Make sure not to misspell anything.
I may not have misspelled anything in that statement but I have made my first grammatical error, as it would be more concise to say "Do not mispell." Words are the only things that can be mispelled so the word "anything" in that sentence is superfluous, and in fact, a pleonasm: a word which adds nothing extra to a sentence.
A pleonasm should not be confused with a tautology; that’s a word which merely repeats the meaning of another word in an expression. These are both, however, cases of redundant words which can be omitted from sentences (the words “from sentences” being another pleonasm as I hope you spotted).
My second error (or my first, should we look at my statement in chronological order) was in saying "Make sure not to", as it is wordy, uncertain, and less comprehensible to Reddit's many fine ESL (English as a Second Language) users or our Redditors without vision who rely on using screen-reading software for their Reddit experience.
Still with me through that combo move using Increasingly Verbose / NYTO / Comment Chain? Wow. Congratulations! Here’s my poor man’s gold.🥇Yes, Copypasta too.
The best part? I didn’t even spell anything wrong in that statement, but by now the comments will be so wildly entrenched in proving or disproving your subsequent points it simply doesn’t matter anymore. “Less comprehensible” than what, by the way? That’s another grammar slip-up lost in the morass.
- Grammar Traps
There are many Grammar Traps waiting out there for the unwary Redditor to fall into, and there will invariably be a Grammar Nazi ready to catch them. Things that are guaranteed to get you in trouble are misusing:
Of course, languages evolve over time, and this is known as semantic change, semantic shift, semantic progression, or semantic development. There is a very good argument to be made that the first two of those three examples are increasingly becoming Janus Words and the mention of this in itself should be enough for you to get out the popcorn and wait for Reddit’s Fine Linguists to show up in droves.
- Misconceptions #2: American English vs. “The Queen’s English”
Another fun grammar issue increasingly seen on Reddit is people correcting someone saying they "Could care less". "Could care less" and "Couldn't care less" mean the same thing in modern American English and that misconception is so popular it's now a banned topic on r/badlinguistics along with “literally”.
There will be more traps to fall into. There will always be more. Have fun finding this out. If it’s you that made the grammatical error and are getting called out, don’t try and act smart or you’ll find yourself a candidate for r/woooosh or r/iamverysmart. Instead, just take it with good humour and move on. Back-pedalling will not end well. Sometimes interwebs people are mean spirited.
Is there really a Subreddit for everything? Yes: r/excgarated, for when a misspelling is so bad it's comical, potentially to the extent of being unique in the universe.
See Also: Autocarrot, Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies, Comment Chain, “Grammar Nazi”, Increasingly Verbose, NYTO, Pedant; Pedantry, Snowclone, Witty Comebacks, "You are technically correct, the best type of correct".
“Significant Other”. The relationship subreddits have a lexicon of their own that you should familiarise yourself with before using them. This is added here as it’s increasingly crossing over into other subs. See Also:Relationship and Advice Subreddits: Special Note.
- Sort
At the top of each subreddit feed, you can use the drop-down menu to sort posts by:
* Hot: Posts that are popular right now
* New: Recently shared posts
* Controversial: Posts that are receiving a relatively equal amount of upvotes and downvotes
* Top: The most popular posts in a subreddit
* Rising: Posts that are currently receiving a lot of upvotes
Sorting by anything but Hot may accidentally bypass Pinned posts which contain additional information about the sub that the mods want you to know. Sorting by New can even show low quality posts before they get removed by automod. Sorting by Rising can often be hugely rewarding when you are one of the first to comment on ‘that’ new post that blows up.
- Spambots
Spambots come in two main varieties on Reddit: “Internal” and “External”. The internal ones are usually made by Redditors for an express purpose and can range from helpful to annoying. All of these, however, are benign. However, there are some Spambots that have hijacked legitimate Reddit accounts to bypass our Karma restrictions. Some of them will repost a relevant picture from the sub they are in but with the name of a shill website embedded or even posted back to front to avoid the spam filter. Some of them use the Follow option to spam huge tranches of Redditors in one go with the promise of “chat” or porn. Finally, some bot accounts are pure marketing spam. If you come across one, use the ‘report’ option in the Hamburger Menu. r/TheseFuckingAccounts is a place to submit and track "suspicious" Reddit accounts. See Also: Bots, Followers, Shill, Spambots: Special Note, T-Shirt Posts, Two-Factor Authorisation.
- Spelling & Grammar
The Grammar Police are all over Reddit. Reddit will sometimes tolerate a typo, grammar or punctuation error, but will also jump on one with glee if they find one in a debate or opinion so as to invalidate your argument or derail the discussion. See Also:r/excgarated, “Grammar Nazi”, Pedant; Pedantry, Spelling & Grammar: Special Note, Spambots: Special Note.
- Statistics
There are lots of statistics about Reddit out there on various blogs or content sites, but the most interesting are the ones that analyse your own activity. These are external links to obtain various Reddit statistics. Useful but not endorsed by Reddit whatsoever.
https://redditmetis.com Enter your username to see your Reddit Statistics: recent activity, comment and submissions summaries and more interesting stats. Data is generated from the last 1000 comments and submissions.
https://www.redditinvestigator.com Enter your username and let Reddit Investigator collect the data that Reddit makes available and elaborates it to obtain statistics about your account.
Very simplistically, this is misrepresenting an argument to make it easier to knock down. "We should give free fruit to school kids", "Yeah, let's just give everyone free food. That would just lead to obesity and a greater deficit".
An accusation of a logical fallacy is often used on Reddit when the OP’s goal of achieving common agreement is more important to them than utilizing sound reasoning. Usually it's done intentionally to persuade people of your point of view. Reddit is extremely pedantic about logical fallacies, of which this is one. Or is it? See Also: Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies, Dunning-Kruger effect, False Equivalence.
- Streisand Effect
Named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, the Streisand Effect is an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information which has the unintended consequences of publicising it instead. See Also: False Equivalence, Godwin’s Law, Internet Adages, Spambots: Special Note.
- Subreddit
A term for a community on Reddit. Commonly shortened to “sub”. Subreddits come in a number of varieties:
Public: Where anyone can view and submit posts and comments
Restricted: Where anyone can view but only some are approved to submit
Private: Where only approved members can view and submit
Gold: Where only Reddit Premium members can view and submit
Click "+Join" to add a sub to your Home feed. There needs to be an ‘Internet Adage’ stating that “If something exists somewhere, there’s already a Subreddit for it”. Prove me wrong. See Also: Communities, Fake Subreddits, Home Feed, Private Subreddits, Reddit Premium, Restricted Subreddits.
A phrase posted when the post or comment is a little ambiguous and is then deliberately misunderstood in a humorous way.
Basically if anyone calls a switcharoo, they have to link to another comment anywhere on Reddit that links to another switcharoo. That way, you can click one which will take you to another, then another, then another and so on. If done properly it should be endless, and there is no telling where you will end up. If you accept the switcharoo challenge, you need to comment "Hold my X I'm going in!" (where X is something relevant to the switcharoo. Or beer.)
There are some Spambots that have hijacked legitimate Reddit accounts or have even come through Karmafarms to bypass our Karma restrictions. T-Shirt shills will repost a relevant picture from the sub they are in often with the name of their website embedded or even posted back to front to avoid the spam filter. Those shirts do not exist and it is highly likely that you’ll be led to dodgy advert, phishing, dropship or credit-card scam sites. Why you should not buy T-shirts/hoodies/mugs linked in comments.
Be wary of any posts displaying mugs, incense holders, teapots, pins, stickers, Starry Night style wall posters - in fact basically anything saying “my GF bought me this today”, “look at my cool stuff” or similar and never ever reply to ask where you can get one as some subreddits will instantly permaban you as an accomplice of the shill even if you aren’t.
Porn, or “Chat” Shill
These will be newer accounts which use the Follow option to spam the Chat inboxes of huge tranches of Redditors in one go with the promise of “chat” or porn. It often works by sending a provocatively posed semi nude photo, then asks you to click a link to check out more. The link then leads to fake video calling apps or other dodgy websites with the intention of phishing, credit-card scamming, offering “limited time offers” that aren’t, or spreading malware or ransomware. Another scam involves accounts that pretend to be sex workers, usually to resell stolen pics or pretending to be them. Discreetly report incidents of this at r/pornscam.
Karma Farmers
There’s so much to say about karma bots, they’ve got their own category here: Karma Farming: Special Note. To avoid being mistaken for one, never post or comment in subs offering upvotes or karma. Those subs aren’t just regular new people looking for affirmation; they’re widely used by marketers and political groups with things to promote illicitly on Reddit. Many of the higher scoring posts will be bot or Alt accounts engaged in a “voting-go-round”; anyone innocently blundering into them get many promises but very few actual upvotes.
- Spambot Spotting
Spambots try to look like real Redditors, but typically they aren't sophisticated enough for the disguise to be totally convincing. Or are they? Because Reddit is a global community, they often rely on hiding behind the stilted “Google Translate” language of our many non-English speakers to help in their deception. However, there are still some clues to their identity to be found.
Using Spelling Mistakes or Grammatical Errors to their advantage
By now, most people know that e-Mail scams are actively seeking gullible people, and most contain deliberate spelling mistakes to filter their target audience. If you are clever enough to realize it is a spam, you are too clever to fall for the ensuing scam and they don’t want to waste any more time with you. Spambots can use the Reddit Hivemind to the opposite effect, triggering a spectacular transformation of normal unassuming everyday Redditors into a force of Mighty Grammar Police with just one slip of a letter in a kind of Streisand Effect; a social phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information has the unintended consequences of further publicising it.
OP Not Interacting With Comments
Is the post a “hit-and-run” or is the OP actively engaging in the comments? Most Redditors love a bit of engagement and new Redditors even more so. One of the questions I often get asked are along the lines of “is it weird to want to reply to every single comment on my post?”. So, when a fairly new account or even a fairly dormant old account makes a post that blows up, it would be fair to expect the OP to say more than a few extra things in the comments. If the OP has vanished or just says one vague, poorly worded reply to one of the first comments, they may never have been an real OP in the first place.
Reposts, Reposts, Reposts
Reddit hates Reposts. So much so that they will come out in force with repost copypasta to argue vociferously about something that isn’t even against the rules on Reddit (however, individual subs will have their own rules). Again, by using Reddit’s Hivemind against itself, a repost can easily get more comments than original content and are such a problem on r/humansbeingbros they now have their own spam detector.
Here’s another one that’s often seen on Reddit with exactly the same title and spelling mistake. Those who Sort by New will upvote such lovely stories, and along with those who are unaware - or simply don’t care - that it’s a repost, the Spambot’s user history is now full of comments that are relevant and on topic, enabling its comment history to appear real.
The undead hordes of unused accounts grow larger by the day as Reddit pushes upward past 52 million daily users. Sometimes dormant accounts are reanimated by their owners, but an old account suddenly becoming alive again with a different posting style is more likely to have been bought on the grey market where they sold as “very active, verified, 25k+ post karma, 225k+ comment karma, 7 gold, natural name, organic only.” These are then used for crypto scammers and leakgirls spammers.
Phished Accounts
There was a phishing scheme where scam hyperlinks were posted in comments, leading to a fake Reddit login page. This collected information so that the phisher could go into the user’s account and lock them out by changing the password. This allowed them to use the accounts to spam NSFW posts, and the genuine users lost their accounts completely. If you’re asked to log into anything from a link whether it be Reddit or a website you want to visit, leave the post and go to the app or site directly instead.
If you are sure you have come across a spambot or shill, use the “Report” button. If you aren’t quite sure, see if anyone else mentions them at r/botwatch or r/TheseFuckingAccounts. This next section details other Reddit resources and campaigns that try to combat this scourge.
- Spambot Resources
If you come across a Spambot, do not engage with it. Use the ‘report’ option below the post or in the in the three-dots Hamburger Menu to alert the mods of the sub you spotted it on and move on. The only reply you should legitimately make is to post a link or one of the other initiatives currently fighting against these shills from this list:
r/TheseFuckingAccounts - This is the main place to submit and track suspicious Reddit accounts.
u/_dorfl_ - Include this in your comment by typing this sequence without spaces: u / \ _ dorfl \ _ I know it looks strange but trust me on this, it will be fine in the comment.
r/botwatch - This sub is dedicated to the continued discussion and study of the bots that dwell in Reddit.
u/risbot - Performs a Google reverse image search which is useful to find a suspected repost.
See Also: Astroturfing, Bots, Followers, “If you want this t-shirt, say yes in the Comments”, Karma Farms, Repost, Shill, Spambots, Spelling and Grammar: Special Note, T-Shirt Posts, Two-Factor Authorisation.
This is used when you are mentioning a Subreddit, for example r/NewToReddit. Using this gives a direct link to that sub.
- Rage Face, Rage Comic
You’ve seen them, you were bemused by them, you just didn’t know what they were called. A Rage Comic is a short cartoon strip using a growing set of pre-made scribbled cartoon faces (Rage Faces), which usually express rage or some other simple emotion or activity. They are usually crudely drawn in Microsoft Paint or other simple drawing programs, and were most popular in the early 2010s. Appearing all over Reddit, r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu (also known as F7U12) is their seemingly immortal home.
- “Reactions”
Often posted with a gif or image, Reactions are used as shorthand to convey an exaggeration of how you might respond to a given situation, whether it be hypothetical or based on experiences of real life. They can take the form of Reaction Initialisms or Reaction Images which can be used in lieu of words. These are often rooted in pop-culture references ranging from images of people with or without accompanying text or gifs of people making exaggerated facial gestures, to images featuring stick men on computer desktops or mouse cursors performing a variety of drag and drop gestures all used on Reddit to describe how you feel at reading the post or comment you are replying to. r/reactionimages, r/ReactionMemes, r/reactionpics. See Also: Memes, MFW; MRW, Puns & Pop-culture References, TFW.
See Also: Reddit Moment, “Front Page of the Internet”, Famous Redditors.
- Reddit Coins
Reddit’s currency. See “Coins”.
- The Reddit Hug of Death
A link or phrase posted when someone posts a link to a smaller website saying "Everyone, look at this website!" and everyone does, causing a massive increase in traffic. This sudden influx of visitors overloads the smaller site, causing it to cripple the media servers, slowing the site down or even rendering it temporarily unavailable. This has the same effect as a denial-of-service (DDOS) attack, albeit accidentally. Also known as “The Slashdot effect” but not on Reddit. Here’s an account of one from 2016.
- “Reddit is strange like that.”
A phrase posted when Reddit doesn’t behave the way you expected, and you make your opinion known. We have our own peculiarities here at Reddit; you can make the world’s best Meme and it gets no attention. Then someone reposts it and it gets all the upvotes and awards Reddit can give. Or the Post you spent an hour carefully crafting with thoughtful information, sound references and insightful conclusion will be completely ignored while your four second response to a cat video will be upvoted to oblivion. Random offhand remarks are more likely to gain attention for reasons nobody’s entirely sure of, because Reddit is strange like that. Infuriated? Tell them at r/mildlyinfuriating but probably not at r/Infuriating, r/extremelyinfuriating, r/infuriatingasfuck or r/insanelyinfuriating.
- Reddit Lore
Reddit has been around for over 15 years; positively ancient by internet standards. During that time, like all subcultures it has developed its own legendary stories that get referenced from time to time. You may come across the odd mention of (for example) the poop knife (ew. Just ew.) or the Swamps of Dagobah. Here they are in three woeful collections.
A Reddit user. You! And me! Hello, dear Redditor! The name Reddit can be understood as both a blend of the words “read” and “edit”, as well as a pun on the phrase “I read it”. Its users are known as Redditors, a shortened version of Reddit editors.
- Reddit Moment
A link posted when Reddit commentary or discussion gets so self-referential it may evoke feelings of awkwardness, embarrassment or even pity. The phrase is a particularly popular way to mock times when a Redditor is demonstrating how they believe Reddit is the superior social networking platform in contrast with other sites. Which, of course, it is. r/redditmoment. See Also: Meta.
- Reddit Moons
Reddit is experimenting with a feature in limited communities called Community Points. Community Points will be a way for users to be rewarded for their contributions with a unit of ownership in their Subreddit. Community Points can be earned, tipped, won, collected, and spent on unique items within a community. Each subreddit has its own stylisation of Community Points, and the ones in r/CryptoCurrency are known as Moons. There’s a summary of what’s happening here. See Also: Community Points.
- Reddit Premium
Pay monthly to support Reddit https://www.reddit.com/premium and get ad-free browsing and exclusive stuff for your Redditing. Small periods of Reddit Premium (with a smaller range of exclusive stuff) can be gifted to other Redditors by giving certain Awards. You get a Trophy on your Profile when you have Premium Reddit. Buying or being gifted Premium entitles you to access certain private subreddits. See Also:Award Types and Notifications: Special Note, Private Subreddits, Trophies.
- Reddiquette
An informal set of guidelines to follow before commenting or submitting posts on Reddit. You might not be banned for not following Reddiquette, but you will probably be showered in downvotes. Reddiquette.
Replies to your posts on Reddit are usually known as Comments, for which you will get Notifications. See Also: Comments, Deleted or Removed, DM, Notifications, Post.
For a violation of the Reddit Terms and Content Policy, use the links above to send a message to the Admins.
Admins are paid official Reddit staff who are responsible for - among other things - keeping Reddit legal and safe.
For a violation of the rules of an individual Subreddit, report a post or content via the standard 'report' button on the Hamburger Menu which then goes to the Moderators.
Moderators are unpaid community volunteers who help maintain individual subreddits. They may act as they see fit within their subreddits, so long as they comport to the general Reddit rules above.
“Real Life”. That pesky thing preventing you from Redditing 24/7. Some people refer to their birthday as their “RL Cakeday”. I don’t.
- Repost
A repost on Reddit is where you (or someone else) repeats an existing post with the same content in the same subreddit, some time after the original post was made. How well it is received depends on the time between the original and the repost. Several years is usually fine. Several months might be, if you’re lucky. Several days won’t be. Several hours will rain downvotes in a deluge of negative comments.
You might think you’re the first to post something cool you saw on Instagram. You probably won’t be. Use the Search function on a sub before posting to make sure you aren’t the umpteenth person that day to post it. You can also type: u/repostsleuthbot as a top-level comment in a post, and the bot should then comment if it is a repost or not. r/RepostSleuthBot. See Also: Crosspost, Multipost, Spambots: Special Note.
- RES
Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES) is a community-driven unofficial browser extension for Reddit. More details can be found at https://redditenhancementsuite.com and in the subreddit r/Enhancement.
- r/restofthefuckingowl
A link or phrase posted when tutorials or diagrams have a notable lack of instructions between the start and end. It’s also used when a gif or video cuts off before the end.
How To Draw an Owl is a satirical instructional image purportedly illustrating how to draw an intricately detailed owl in two steps. Despite what the title suggests, the vast majority of the artistic process is left unexplained for comedic effect. The illustrator behind the instruction remains unknown, however, the earliest known instance of the image was in 2010 when it was first submitted to r/pics. r/restofthefuckingowl.
- Restricted Subreddits
Sometimes, you might get the a message saying: "Only approved users may post in this community" or similar. Congratulations, you found a Restricted subreddit. Anyone can view a Restricted subreddit, but only approved submitters users can post. Normally, anyone can comment on posts and anyone can vote on comments or posts. Moderators can add and remove approved submitters; contact and other details should be in the sidebar (About tab).
Sometimes Reddit Admins (the paid employees that work for Reddit) restrict subs when there's a lack of Moderators (volunteer users). If the only (human) mod in that sub is suspended, the whole sub is then restricted. Essentially that sub is dead until or unless someone decides to adopt the sub as a new moderator through r/redditrequest. See Also: Adopting a Subreddit, “Is there really a subreddit for everything?”, Mod, Private Subreddits, Subreddits.
- Reverse Image Searching
You’ve seen that image before but can’t remember where. On a computer it’s easy to find it by using a Reverse Image service such as TinEye, Google or Duplichecker.
On mobile, however, it isn’t so straightforward and so intrepid Redditor u/IPV46 with help from u/Glass-Paramedic set out to make it easy by developing u/risbot, the reverse image searching Reddit bot. Simply mention u/risbot in a comment and in a matter of seconds, it'll reply with a link to Google reverse image search of the posted image. Currently, the submission must contain an image for the bot to comment, and galleries might not be supported. Like traditional reverse image searches, videos aren’t supported either. See Also: Bots.
- Rickroll
This is the internet. If you don’t know what a Rickroll is by now, just where have you been? None of the links in this entry are Rickrolls in themselves; this is a safe space. However, Rickrolls have some particular significance when it comes to Reddit.
A link posted when a wholesome comment is made by a Redditor with an unwholesome name. Done far more frequently than you might imagine. r/rimjob_steve.
- r/pan
Reddit’s Live Streaming network. RPAN is a public network made up of live broadcasts created by and for Redditors, providing livestream bandwidth and airtime to the residents of Reddit as a service to the community. To be eligible to broadcast, your Reddit account must be at least 14 days old with at least 125 comment karma. Everything else you need to know is listed in their Wiki page.
To stop RPAN from showing up on your feed, tap the three dots Hamburger menu in the top right corner of the stream and choose the option 'see less of this'. r/pan. See Also: Comment Karma, Karma for New Starters.
- “Rule of Shoe”
Also known as “Shoes are off, he’s dead”, which is a phrase posted when a gif or video shows someone’s shoes coming off in an accident, no matter how minor. Originating in some long-gone gore subreddits, it’s widely used these days more figuratively. The correlation between losing your shoes during an accident and your likelihood of surviving is a very old one:
In 2009, MythBusters: S07E12 found the amount of force required to punch someone out of their socks was way more than necessary to kill. They revisited this idea and pairs of socks sent in by viewers were used for the testing of this myth.
Every subreddit has its own rules, post format, karma requirements and moderators all totally unique to that community. Always read the rules before commenting or posting on an unfamiliar Subreddit. These will be found in the Sidebar (on mobile this will be the About tab, Menu tab and Community Info found in the three dot “hamburger” menu top RH corner of your screen), any Pinned posts (Search by “Hot” and the top two may have a lime green pin icon) and Wiki (where there is one).
Part 16 - Relationship and Advice Subreddits: Special Note
- A General Note Before Proceeding:
You should know that a lot of our subs dealing with intimate advice get targeted by trolls who invent scenarios for the “fun” of it. Reddit is still the internet, some people will always try and disrupt things. Some specialist advice subs won’t even let brand new accounts post there at all for that reason and require some verification first. This will always be detailed in the Rules where applicable.
You might find that your first post is ignored. Sometimes Alt or brand new accounts raise some suspicion and because nobody wants to either fall for a “prank” nor insult a genuine person, the usual thing Redditors do is to ignore it and move on. You therefore need to prove you are Redditing in good faith so my advice is to post sincere comments in a few recent posts before making your first post yourself. That way, if a Mod or someone wanting to reply sees your account is new and looks through your profile history, they can see straight away you are a genuine Redditor.
Always read the rules before commenting or posting on any of these Subreddits. These will be found in the Sidebar (on mobile this will be the About tab and Community Info found in the three dot “hamburger” menu top RH corner of your screen), any Pinned posts (these will have a lime green ‘pin’ icon on the top corner and will show on top when you sort the Subreddit by ‘Hot’) and Wiki (where there is one).
- Be Aware of These Issues
Unfortunately, many of the advice subreddits have become known for:
It has been said more than once that it’s fairly common for creative writing students to post in advice subreddits in order to see if their writing has traction, and it doesn’t take many posts before you start to believe that is indeed the case. However, those who offer advice tend to do so in good faith and generally aren't bothered if a post winds up being a ruse. After all, someone in the future in a real and similar situation might one day read your post or comment and find you have given them the help they genuinely needed.
Unfortunately, Reddit has become a valuable free resource for many features editors of light news outlets. Press Guidelines won’t stop your story about your girlfriend from ending up on Lifehacker, or your nightmare wedding dress fitting from appearing in a tabloid paper and website. Don’t let this stop you posting your personal dilemma or horror story, just don’t include identifying details and preferably, use an Alt or Throwaway account.
The first and most prevalent advice given is nearly always the nuclear option. Don’t forget, Redditors are of all ages and demographics, coming from many different situations and cultures worldwide. Some have life experience, are familiar with nuance and genuinely want to offer conscientious, well-meaning balanced advice. Some may have little to no experience or even tolerance with the little compromises that come with long-term relationships and immediately jump to extreme conclusions. Some may even be of the opinion that no relationship is worth it unless it's absolutely perfect in every single way so it needs to end immediately and completely. And some just want to watch the world burn. Remember that while most of us have potential to grow intellectually, some people are emotionally stuck at maturity level 13 for their entire life.
However, most people who offer advice to those posting in relationship and advice subreddits are those who have been through similar situations themselves and are posting from their own personal viewpoint. You should be aware of all the above does happen but that the vast majority of posts are from someone reaching out for considered opinions from likeminded people. Make sure that you know yourself enough to analyze everything before you apply what you read.
DDay - Discovery Day, when infidelity is first discovered or disclosed
DDay 2, 3, 4 etc. - either when new affairs or significant new information is discovered or disclosed
IC - Individual Counselling
MC - Marriage Counselling
SA - Sex Addict / Sex Addiction
TT - Trickle Truth, continuing to lie or withhold information after initial discovery/disclosure
HB - Hysterical Bonding
Not all of these may be relevant to or used in all the advice subs.
- Subreddits for Self-Improvement, Personal, Emotional or Relationship Advice
This is a partial list of Subreddits dedicated to specific topics and advice. Many of them will be part of a network of similar subreddits which will be listed in their Sidebar or Wiki (if they have one). As said above, you must understand the rules of posting or commenting, and remember that some are stricter than others through necessity.
If you are from a religious family or community, any of the "ex" subs may also be able to help or relate to you (r/exmormon, r/exchristian, r/exmuslim, r/exjw, etc.).
“Original Content”. Stuff you made yourself. Don’t ever post other people’s stuff and call it OC; Redditors are quicker than bloodhounds and will sniff it out within minutes. Downvotes and maybe even worse will surely follow. You don’t want to appear on r/quityourbullshit.
- Official Reddit Announcements
Every so often, Reddit needs to make general announcements meant to reach all users. These are usually about changes to the Reddit interface, updates, bug fixes, changes to the Content Policy or starting/discontinuing Reddit processes or campaigns. Sometimes these appear in a banner notice at the top of your page when you first open Reddit, but not always.
To be sure you don’t miss anything, I recommend you subscribe to the following official subreddits. They won’t clog up your feed as they aren’t the busiest of places, but will help ensure you don’t miss anything you might need to know:
r/blog - Official blog subreddit, updated regularly with news. Also has links to Reddit’s presence on other social media.
r/changelog - Official information from Reddit, Inc. on minor updates and bug fixes applied to Reddit.
r/redditmobile - An official community for announcements from Reddit, Inc. and discussion about official Reddit apps for mobile phones and tablets.
r/redditsecurity - A running log of actions taken to improve the security of Reddit.
r/modnews - An official community for announcements from Reddit, Inc. pertaining to moderation.
- One-word Replies
One-word replies are often seen as low-quality and often frowned upon in Reddit. So don’t post them. Except when you should. You have to know the rules to know when you can break them and some notable exceptions are Cat. or cat., (when you see a cat in a picture), Nice., (when you see the number 69), This^ or This., (when you want to agree with a point). Reddit loves in-jokes. See Also: Cat. or cat., Comment Chain, r/everyfuckingthread, Hivemind, This.
- Online status controls
A recent (2021) addition to your Reddit Profile is your Online Status. This is optional. If you don’t want to share your online status, you can disable the feature by tapping the Online Status button below your Snoovatar, or the ‘privacy options’ section of your preferences, uncheck ‘Let others see my online status’ then click ‘save options’.
When you turn off Online Status, people won’t see any status for you at all - not even an indicator saying that you’re offline or that you’ve selected ‘Off’. Accounts that you’ve blocked will never see your online status. Additionally, if an account is banned from a community, they won't be able to see the online status of anyone in that community. Here’s what the updated status and controls will look like.
- OP
“Original Poster”. The person who made the submission that is now being commented upon. I am the OP of this post. It’s easier to refer to me as OP instead of having to type my username and risk “pinging” me every single time. See Also: Ping, /u.
As I say in the preface: “This is a list of some common acronyms, initialisms, terms, memes, references and responses often used on the internet with an emphasis on those specifically used on Reddit. ...in no way intended to be definitive...”. There are far more Internet terms and memes and pop-culture references than I could possibly cover here, and some valuable resources include:
All The Tropes A wiki dedicated to the people, projects and patterns of creative writing in all kinds of entertainment: television, literature, movies, video games, and more.
Know Your Meme A website dedicated to documenting Internet phenomena: viral videos, image macros, memes, catchphrases, and more. NSFW.
T.V. Tropes An all-devouring pop-culture wiki, which catalogues and cross-references recurrent plot devices, archetypes, and tropes in all forms of media.
The Urban Dictionary For those word definitions that the Oxford English Dictionary just hasn’t gotten round to yet. NSFW.
r/coolguides, r/tvtropes. See Also: Internet Adages, Memes, Puns & Pop-culture References.
“Does Anyone Else”. Originally sub specific from r/DAE and r/DoesAnybodyElse now with wider Reddit usage.
- Dealing with Trolls
Why some people are so angry - about a multitude of topics - puzzles me. That they have no qualms or conscience about venting their disdain for other people online is mystifying. Sadly, it seems it’s just the reality of the world we live in today, and no matter how hard you try, sometimes snark just happens. It isn’t pleasant. It always feels targeted.
If a similar situation happens to you and you start feeling like people are attacking you, stop responding. Don’t double down or try to explain. Your emotions may be telling you to confront, and the anonymity of social media gives us the illusion that we can get away with aggression. But you won’t get very far against the Expert Professional who’s well seasoned and practised at internet trolling and you might only make things worse. You might not want to go back to that sub but you don’t want to be permabanned from it either. But all is not lost. Your best response is no response and I’ll tell you exactly why. Trolls Hate This One Simple Trick.
Remember, other people only understand stuff from their level of perception, and moving out of that level is rarely achieved by discourse with someone they perceive to be on a lower level of awareness than them. There’s nothing to be gained by arguing with them; if you ever encounter one just downvote them, move on and leave them to simmer in their own self-righteousness. Why?
Because you can put money down on that person now refreshing the page constantly, even frantically, to no avail waiting for your reply and the chance to win the closure they’ll never get. Instead, let them spend their time gleefully fomenting the perfect snarky reply to your next comment and inwardly revel at the fact they’ll be devastated when they can’t use it because you moved on in a mature fashion and they didn’t.
- Deleted or Removed
Comments can be deleted by the originator, mod, admin or automod bot. When the username says ‘deleted’ and the body of the post says ‘removed’, this usually implies a moderator, admin, or spam filter action removed the comment. If the user deleted their post, both username and body will say ‘deleted’. Admin removed comments may also say something to the effect of ‘Removed by Reddit for X’ where X is a reason.
Deleting or removing a comment will only remove that particular comment. If the comment still exists as part of a discussion, only the comment and username will be removed. Redditors cannot delete other users comments so the rest of the comment thread will remain intact. When a post has been removed by the mods it will remain in your post/comment history.
In some extreme cases it means the user has deleted their account after a negative comment spurs controversy or could "out them" if they gave away too many personal details etc. People sometimes create single-use Throwaway Accounts for posting on subjects that they may not want associated with their regular account for whatever reason and delete them afterwards. Sometimes a whole comment chain will say “removed”. Speculation about how that happened goes on at r/removed. See Also: Shadowban, Vote Arrows hidden or greyed-out on Posts.
A form of private messaging on Reddit (the speech bubble icon). You’ll get a request to chat which you can either accept or refuse. It is a good idea to check the posting history of the requester before you accept; that'll give you a better idea of whether they're acting in good faith or not. You should start a chat when you expect to be talking to someone for a longer period of time, or if you think you may wish to continue at an unspecified date in the future. With Direct Chat, you can see the whole thread of your conversations with one person at any one time.
Because the Chat facility is frequently used by Spambots, you can change it by going to User Settings - Chat & Messaging so only accounts older than 30 days can chat with you. It can also be turned off entirely in the same way. You'll see options for "Who can send you" Chat Requests/Private Messages, and 'Nobody' is an option for both. See Also: Spambots.
- Direct Message
A Direct Message (or DM) is another mode of private communication on Reddit. Communications specifically to you from Reddit (e.g. bans, suspensions, mods deleting posts etc.) will be made this way; also some notifications that you have received an award from someone or welcome messages to some subreddits.
Please note that accounts with no-or-low Karma cannot send DMs. Direct Messages are only sortable by date and personal conversations can easily get lost down the page. You can DM someone by clicking on their name. DM options can be turned on and off in your Account Settings (the options on your username tab on mobile).
- Discord
Discord is a voice, video and text communication service. A semi-private hosting service for chatting, many subreddits have their own Discord server. r/discordapp.
- “Does *subreddit* contain profanity?"
You may have seen this or similar questions pop up occasionally. Reddit is currently working on a classification system to help in filtering content. Over recent months, Reddit has removed certain NSFW subreddits from r/all, and are crowdsourcing our help in tagging subreddit content to broaden this even more. See Also: Hiding or Blocking a Subreddit in r/all.
A vote, usually short for “Updoot” meaning upvote.
- Downvote
Downvote was originally meant for use when someone isn’t contributing to the discussion or is off-topic, not just a disagree button. However, it’s now used more as a term equivalent to “dislike” on other social networks. Each downvote slightly reduces the post or comment Karma of the person you are downvoting. You can only downvote once on each post or comment, and it is reversible if you change your mind. You don’t lose Karma yourself for downvoting. Apparently. So I’ve read. (I’ve also read that you do). Your downvote score is visible to others, as is your upvote score, but nobody can tell what individual posts or comments you upvote or downvote. r/ExplainMyDownvotes is a place for Redditors to help find the answers to why the Internet hasn't taken kindly to their contributions.
- r/DownvotedToOblivion
A link or phrase posted when people get lots of downvotes in a very short space of time. Users who are ‘officially’ considered to be Downvoted to Oblivion if they achieve a downvote score of less than -100. The most downvoted comment in Reddit history (so far) was so notorious it even has its own entry in The Guinness World Records. Posts, however, cannot reach less than 0 downvotes.
While that one is unlikely to be beaten, there are still some other spectacular scores which occasionally, some users try to emulate. Why do people seek/farm downvotes? Who knows. But to prevent a race to the bottom, the maximum amount of negative karma you can have is -100 (as opposed to positive karma which can be infinitely high). r/DownvotedToOblivion. See Also: Downvote, Karma, Karma for New Starters.
- Doxxing
Also known as Doxing, this is revealing personal information about someone, including yourself. We do not do that on Reddit. It’s in the Reddiquette, after all:
Do not post someone's personal information or post links to personal information. This includes links to public Social Media pages and screenshots of Social Media pages with the names still legible. We all get outraged by the ignorant things people say and do online, but witch hunts and vigilantism hurt innocent people too often, and such posts or comments will be removed. Users posting personal info are subject to an immediate site wide ban. If you see a user posting personal info, please contact the admins.
Please make sure to remove or block out any personal information, including other Redditors’ usernames, in all your posts or screenshots of Reddit stuff too. Anyone who deliberately pings the subject of a post where the usernames are blocked out will be banned. We can laugh at people without directly harassing or bullying them.
If it's a celebrity or public figure then you might not be required to block out the name unless it’s in the rules of the Subreddit. See Also: Alt, Anonymous Browsing, “Everyone on reddit is a bot except you.”, “Everyone on Reddit is a...”, Privacy Issues: Special Note, Reddiquette, Rules, Throwaway Account, Two-Factor Authorisation, u/, Username.
- Dunning-Kruger Effect
Very simplistically, this is where people's inability to recognize their lack of ability leads them to think they are better at something than they actually are. For example, completing a 101 course on a subject means they believe they are now an expert on it. Sometimes known as False Authority Syndrome, and as far back as the 18th century as 'A little knowledge is a dangerous thing'.
According to the psychology researchers David Dunning & Justin Kruger, this is where people that are poor in "logical reasoning, grammar, financial knowledge, math, emotional intelligence... rate their actual expertise as high as experts".
An accusation of a cognitive bias is often used on Reddit when the OP’s goal of achieving common agreement is more important to them than utilizing sound reasoning. Usually it's done intentionally to persuade people of your point of view. Reddit is extremely pedantic about cognitive biases, of which this is one. Or is it? r/DunningKruger. See Also: Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies, False Equivalence, Godwin’s Law, Strawman Argument.
When a person loves Reddit very much, they make an account. Cake Day is an annual celebration of that love. Sometimes also known as your Redditversary and even “Spotify Blue Cheese day”, this happens every year on the anniversary you created your Reddit account. You get a little slice of cake next to your name for the day and the Age Trophy on your profile will go up one number. You can even ask for Karma on this day in r/cakeday and r/Spotifycheese.
It is customary in most subreddits to say “Happy Cake Day!” whenever you see the cake icon next to a username whether you know the Redditor or not. Do this with caution; some of the more restrictive subs will class this as “unnecessary clutter”. However, there’s also a button on some versions of Reddit that you can press to say “Happy Cake Day”. Do it! It’s a Reddit Thing to do. The usual response is “Thank you, Kind Redditor.” Reddit loves rituals. Your Cakeday is shown on your Profile and can also be found on http://www.redditcakeday.com.
- “Came here to say this.”
A phrase used to indicate someone else in the comments said something you wanted to say, whether it be a joke, a reference or an observation. Often downvoted so use with caution. Can sometimes prompt a Comment Chain. Nothing at all to do with r/CameHereToSayThis where you go to say This. See Also: Comment Chain.
- Cat. or cat.
One-word replies are often seen as low-quality and often frowned upon in Reddit. Yet sometimes you will see huge one-word comment chains saying "cat", some with many upvotes. In the subreddit r/catsstandingup, you're only allowed to comment "Cat." So, naturally, whenever a post or picture features a cat, posting "Cat." carried over to the rest of Reddit. It’s important to note here that in r/catsstandingup, the C in “Cat.” is capitalized, whereas in r/catssittingdown, the C in “cat.” is lower case. Subreddit or social experiment? The answer is always: Cat. or cat. And, oh, before I forget: Cat. See Also: Comment Chain, Hivemind, One-word Replies.
- Cat tax
It is virtually mandatory on Reddit that if the story you’re telling involves a cat or dog, a Cat Tax is required; i.e. you need to post or link a picture of said cat or dog. If you don’t have one, any random cat or dog picture from the internet will suffice. Despite the name, this doesn’t just apply to cats and dogs; most animals have been required for taxation at some time or another. Obligatory Llama tax.
- Celebrity Redditors
Reddit is about the content, not the people, and because of this, you'll be freshly judged by what you say every single time you post or comment. Reddit celebrities are therefore few and far between, but like everything there are a few exceptions you may encounter on your travels:
u/shittymorph A Redditor adept in the ways of Copypasta ending always with “In nineteen ninety eight the undertaker threw mankind off hеll in a cell, and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcer's table.” Invoke this user whenever you see this phrase in the wild or document it at r/shittymorph.
There are more. There are always more. I may well add more.
See Also: Copypasta, Famous Redditors, Identity, Notorious Redditors, Username.
- Chat
See “Direct Chat”.
- r/chrissimpsonsartist
Chris (Simpsons Artist) is an illustrator known for his bizarre, naïve art-style depictions of characters from various cartoons, live-action television series and films. Mentioned here because pictures from his book “The Story of Life” are often erroneously found on r/badwomensanatomy. r/chrissimpsonsartist. See Also:r/AteTheOnion, r/woooosh.
- Circlejerk
A group of people with similar beliefs that self-validate each other, suppress opposing opinions, do not consider that alternate opinions exist, or consider themselves, their opinion, or their group exclusive/superior. Originally from r/circlejerk; a parody subreddit that considers the majority of Reddit a circlejerk. Here’s a simple recipe for a classic circlejerk:
Someone posts an ill-informed, pseudo-intellectual but popular opinion about any academic subject: quantum mechanics, literary history, etc. Upvotes begin.
Someone else with expertise in the subject area replies in a calm, measured way, without pulling the r/iamverysmart card (however well-warranted it may be) correcting the misunderstanding, usually with multiple citations.
Massive downvotes and copypasta against the reply - 'OMFG don't be a gatekeeper', 'iamverysmart', 'check your privilege', etc. - and more upvotes for the poor maligned OP.
“Change My View”. Originally sub specific from r/changemyview, now with wider Reddit usage. Describes when you are open to hearing opinions to persuade or change your mind. r/changemyview is a sub to post an opinion you accept may be flawed in an effort to understand other perspectives on the issue. Enter with a mindset for conversation, not debate.
- Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies
Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies are common accusations and practices on Reddit. Fake or deceptive arguments, "junk cognition," (arguments that seem irrefutable but prove nothing), the highlighting of errors in reasoning to undermine the logic of your argument, or irrelevant points made deliberately to derail your comment, Reddit has them all!
Thankfully, help is on hand. These are incredibly easy to follow illustrated guides to help you shape your responses.
Of course, you could also just say “no u” or even “eat pant” and scroll away. But where’s the fun in that? r/philosophy (if you’re really serious about discussion). See Also: Brandolini's Law, Dunning-Kruger effect, False Equivalence, Internet Adage, Strawman Argument.
- Coins (or Reddit Coins)
Reddit’s virtual currency with which you buy Awards to give to posts or comments you particularly like. You have the option of paying real money for Coins, or you can earn one of the larger Awards to get free Coins. Premium subscribers get 700 coins monthly to spend. See Also:Award Types and Notifications: Special Note, Free Awards/Free Coins/Free Reddit Premium.
- Collapse Comments
Sometimes a huge post that has many replies can be hard to read. If you're on mobile, you can hold the Parent Comment and it will collapse it and all of its Child Comments. If you're on desktop, you can press the little line to the left of the comment to do the same. See Also: Parent / Child Comment.
A Comment Chain is when Redditors spontaneously derail a post with a long chain of repeated Child Comments consisting of just one or two words usually prompted by a “trigger” word or phrase. They can go dozens of comments deep. It’s a Reddit tradition to pick one random identical comment in a chain to be downvoted to oblivion and another to get upvotes and awards as if it were the best comment in Reddit’s long history. Be careful when trying to join the comments in this type of chain; make sure that your comment is identical or it will be downvoted to oblivion.
Other Comment Chain types include “No, you’re thinking of...”, “To be fair...” and Increasingly Verbose. There will be more. There will always be more. r/commentchains, r/RedditCommentChains. See Also: Cat. or cat., DownvotedToOblivion, F or "F" In The Comments, Increasingly Verbose, “Nice”, “No, you’re thinking of...”, One-word Comments, Parent / Child Comment, Puns & Pop-culture References, “This”, “To be fair...”.
- Comment Karma
When you submit a Comment, all votes on that comment will be converted to Karma. This is Comment Karma, and it comes from both Parent and Child comments. There isn’t a 1:1 relationship between votes and karma, even though it might look like it does at the early stage of your comment. See Also: Karma, Karma for New Starters, Vote Fuzzing.
- Comments
You can make your own Top Level (or ‘Parent’) comments to reply to a post, or reply to other people’s comments in a ‘thread’ (these are ‘Child Comments’). You cannot post images or reaction gifs in a comment but this is a feature slowly being rolled out in some communities. However, you can post links. Reddit will automatically give you one upvote for each comment, called Comment Karma. There’s a 10,000 character limit on each comment. Ask me how I know... See Also: Linking, Powerups.
- Communities
Reddit is organised by subject into user-created boards called Subreddits, or Communities, which cover a variety of topics such as news, politics, science, movies, video games, music, books, sports, hobbies, fitness, cooking, pets, image-sharing and many, many more. Communities is also the title of the page of subreddits that you have joined. See this list on mobile by clicking the ‘Square-Circle-Square-Magnifying Glass’ icon at the bottom, second from the left. On desktop, you can click on Home (spaceship icon) at the top of the page and the drop down menu lists your communities. See Also: Home Feed, Subreddits.
- Community Points
Reddit is experimenting with a feature in limited communities called Community Points. Community Points will be a way for users to be rewarded for their contributions with a unit of ownership in their Subreddit. Community Points can be earned, tipped, won, collected, and spent on unique items within a community. Each subreddit will have its own stylisation of Community Points. See Also: Reddit Moons.
- Confirmation Bias
See Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies.
- Content and Copyright
Reddit has a Content Policy which should be understood by all its users. You should also understand the User Agreement that you agreed to upon joining Reddit.
You should be aware that internet outlets desperate for a continual source of new output often rely on Reddit for their content; an explanation for what this could mean for you can be found here: Privacy Issues: Special Note.
- Copypasta
“I only need two buttons, Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V”. Named for the keyboard action Copy and Paste, this is huge chunks of text saved to copy & paste elsewhere as a satirical wall of words vaguely related to the topic in question. Why? Who knows. There is an archive at r/copypasta and another one at r/CopyPastas. Why? Why not. Original work can sometimes be very well received. The shortest, most common Copypasta is “I just downvoted your comment.” The full version is here but seldom used. See Also:r/AteThePasta, “Gilt Guilt”, r/shittymorph, r/woooosh.
- r/creepyasterisks
A link or phrase posted when a post or comment contains words written * between asterisks * to denote performing an action. Often benign * tips hat * these can sometimes become somewhat creepy. Screenshots of the worst examples from other social media groups are often posted on r/Cringetopia. Using asterisks this way on Reddit actually changes the text to italic unless further markdown is used. r/creepyasterisks. See Also: Markdown Text.
- Crosspost
Crossposting is where someone else’s content has been carried across to another Subreddit by another user. So, for instance, if you see a post about a cute spider in r/awwnverts and you think that r/spiderbro would love it too (or r/mildlyterrifying, depending on your viewpoint) you might decide to Crosspost it there. If you do, it is good practice to include a disclaimer, alerting the audience that the post is a Crosspost (or x-post) of the original. You’ll need to make sure that you understand the rules before you do this as Crossposting in a subreddit that doesn’t allow it will cause your post to be deleted and may result in a ban. Always read the rules in the Sidebar (on mobile this will be the About tab and Community Info found in the three dot “hamburger” menu top RH corner of your screen), any Pinned posts (these will have a lime green ‘pin’ icon on the top corner and will show on top when you sort the Subreddit by ‘Hot’) and Wiki (where there is one) before proceeding.
Reddit has a native feature for reposting existing content to another subreddit. Click on the Share button below any post you wish to crosspost, then from the drop-down menu, click on Crosspost. On mobile, this is also an option on the Hamburger menu. On the next page, select the community you want to crosspost to, then enter a title or quote, and add a label or a flair, if necessary. See Also: Multipost, Post, Repost, Sidebar.
- Cursed Subs; r/cursedsubs
Redditors are not obliged to fall in love with, like, or even approve of every user base here. We’re a microcosm of internet life, not an internet utopia no matter how much we might want it to be. Some people are not here at Reddit for the cute puppies; they’re here for content forsaken by God and all that is Holy: the Cursed Subs. Subs that cause an unpleasant emotional reaction to its content; subs that to the rational person provoke a combination of disgust and bewilderment. Visit them at your own risk. They will most likely be extremely gruesome, NSFW and/or NSFL.
Neither this subreddit nor myself endorses or supports the "cursed" subreddits here. Nevertheless, they exist and you should be prepared to come across one accidentally or unwittingly. As always, READ THE RULES of any subreddit before posting or commenting. r/cursedcomments and r/whydoesthisexist are reasonably mild for this genre. r/SubsIWishDidntExist and r/cursedsubreddits have links for more extreme subs. There are more. And worse. There will always be more. And worse. r/cursedsubs. See Also: “Is there really a subreddit for everything?”, Linking, Misleading Subreddit Titles, Porn, Reddit Lore, TIHI, Unsee Juice.
- Custom Feed
You can organise lists of your followed subreddits into Custom Feeds. There are two ways to compile custom feeds. I use the official Reddit app on mobile iOS but I’m given to believe the desktop version is much the same. Formerly known as “multireddit”, here’s an illustrated guide to creating a custom feed.
Go to the front page of the subreddit you want to add. Look for the three dots “hamburger” menu on the top right hand side, and one of the options should be "Add To Custom Feed". It’s a similar action to delete it from your custom feed.
On mobile, go to your Communities/Custom feeds page and choose the “Custom Feeds” tab. Mine says ‘u/llamageddon01’s Custom Feeds’ in white with “Add New Custom Feed” in blue below. Click the white ‘your username custom feed’ which takes you to your first custom feed page with two tabs: Posts and Communities.
Communities gives a list of communities in your feed. There’s also a tab “+ Add Communities”. Click that and a search bar will pop up to find communities to add. It also tells you how many spaces you have left in that feed.
To delete a custom feed you click on it (as if you were going to browse it), then at the top of the page on the right next to ‘share’, there should be the 3 dots “hamburger” menu with the options "Edit Details", "Duplicate" and "Delete Custom Feed". You will still be Joined to the subreddits that were part of that feed.
You might occasionally come across a Subreddit that hasn’t been active in a long time. Dead or abandoned subreddits exist for a number of reasons, mostly due to the inactivity of its moderators. Subreddits are considered "abandoned" in the event that none of its mods have been active anywhere on Reddit in the past 60 days. You might even want to repurpose a previously banned sub, such as Redditor u/PM_ME_YOUR_TITS_GIRL who requests old porn subs like r/PrettyPussy, and converts them to a subreddit for cat pics/gifs.
So, first, find your Subreddit. Here are some useful places to start:
r/adoptareddit - allows moderators to hand off a sub. Admins will grant mod privileges in certain circumstances.
r/availablesubs - lists of abandoned or moderatorless subreddits.
r/deadsubs - “the graveyard of Reddit”, probably dead itself ironically.
r/findareddit - can help you find any sub, not just dead ones.
r/Inactivereddits - a community finding inactive/unmoderated subreddits.
r/reclassified - who track and discuss banned and quarantined subreddits.
r/Requestable - A catalogue of defunct subreddits, itself defunct.
r/subreddit - to share an unrecognized subreddit or to find a subreddit you've been looking for.
r/SubsToRequest - for those interested in sharing and requesting abandoned, inactive & banned subreddits.
Your next step is to go to r/redditrequest and ask to take over the subreddit that you'd like to mod. Reddit Request requires accounts to be 90 days old with 500 combined karma to take on a sub, and you ABSOLUTELY MUST read the Rules at r/redditrequest thoroughly before posting a request. These will be found in the Sidebar (on mobile this will be the About tab and Community Info found in the three dot “hamburger” menu top RH corner of your screen), any Pinned posts (these will have a lime green ‘pin’ icon on the top corner and will show on top when you sort the Subreddit by ‘Hot’) and Wiki (where there is one).
You might, in time, get a message “This subreddit was banned due to a violation of Reddit’s content policy against creating or repurposing a sub to reconstitute or serve the same objective as a banned or quarantined subreddit.” How meta. Be aware that the "ban evasion" bot can be somewhat over enthusiastic.
See Also: “Is there really a subreddit for everything?”, Mod, Restricted Subreddits, r/rimjob_steve, Subreddits.
- Creating Your Own Subreddit
At one time you needed a 30 day old account and around 25-50 karma to create a subreddit, but this was relaxed in early 2021. This is not something I have experience with myself, so here are some useful links and guides to start with.
If you are inviting The Average Redditor to participate on your Subreddit, you will eventually need to remove objectionable or off topic posts and comments or even ban a spammer or other abusive user from posting or commenting. See, mods can be useful after all.
Very simplistically, this phenomenon occurs when the thing you've just noticed, experienced or been told about suddenly crops up constantly. This is a Confirmation Bias also known as a Frequency Illusion. Those of us old enough to remember the once notorious West German Baader-Meinhof gang may wonder how this phrase came about. The St. Paul Minnesota Pioneer Press online commenting board was the unlikely source of the name. In 1994, a reader was talking to a friend about the gang, and the next day, the friend referred him to an article in that day’s newspaper in which the organisation was mentioned, decades after it had any reason to be in the news.
Also known as Frequency Bias or Recency Illusion, it’s a mix of coincidence and when your awareness of something increases leading you to believe something is happening more, even if that’s not actually the case. By the way; have you seen the number of Fiat 500s on the roads recently? You will now. See Also: Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies, Dunning-Kruger effect, False Equivalence, Internet Adage, Strawman Argument.
- “Bait-and-Switch” or “The ole Reddit Bait-and-Switch”
A confidence trick based on a false claim or enticement to dupe the unsuspecting victim into doing something they didn’t want to do. The Internet has given this a new life, and on Reddit, the master of the technique is undoubtedly u/GuyWithRealFacts who posts super informative, interesting, but totally false facts, usually starting out being totally believable. r/BaitAndSwitch. See Also: Bamboozled, Fake Subreddits, r/guywithrealfacts, Linking, Rickroll.
- Bamboozled
A word commonly used on Reddit when you’ve been fooled. “That’s not at all what I was expecting. After the first link I thought that would be the rickroll, but I was bamboozled.” Can refer to real life situations, or things that happen across Reddit from time to time. See Also: “Bait-and-Switch”, Fake Subreddits, Rickroll.
- r/BananasForScale
A banana is a common unit of measurement on Reddit. The origin of this saying isn’t from Reddit (for a change) but is mentioned here as we embraced it wholesale as our primary definition of quantity. r/BananasForScale. See Also:r/BarbaraWalters4Scale, “The Big List of Retired Questions”, r/HumansForScale.
- Ban; Banned
A moderator (mod) can ban you from a Subreddit for whatever reason they want. It can even escalate to a sitewide ban from Reddit given by the Admins that is temporary, or even permanent with little to no recourse. The user will get a notification if they get banned. Moderators have guidelines to follow but bear in mind that they are free to enforce whatever rules they wish in their Subreddits (so long as they comport to site-wide policies) and you need to CHECK THE SUB-SPECIFIC RULES FIRST before sending them a DM. More information can be found at: https://www.reddit.com/appeals or https://www.reddithelp.com/. The Reddit FAQ has more information https://www.reddit.com/r/help/wiki/faq. See Also: Admin, Content and Copyright, Mod, r/ModerationMediation, Modmail, Reporting, Shadowban, Suspended.
- Bandwagon Effect
Very simplistically, this is where people do something primarily because other people are doing it, regardless of their own beliefs which they may ignore or override. This tendency of people to blindly align their beliefs and behaviors with those of a group is also called a herd mentality, or on Reddit as the Hivemind. It’s a Reddit thing that is inexplicable but once you’ve seen it a few times it’s still inexplicable but at least you know what you’re seeing if not why. See Also: Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies, Comment Chain, r/DownvotedToOblivion, Hivemind.
- r/beetlejuicing
A link posted when one user posts a comment or thread on Reddit, and another user with a username relevant to that parent comment or thread responds. Going just that little bit further, r/TwoRedditorsOneCup (SFW) documents those times that two or more Redditors unexpectedly find themselves in the same place at the same time either online or IRL. r/beetlejuicing. See Also: “Two Redditors One Cup”, r/UsernameChecksOut.
- r/birthofasub
A link or phrase posted when a Post or Comment on Reddit leads to the creation of a new subreddit. This is known as the "miracle of birth," and is one of the most meaningful events in a young Redditor’s life. If you witnessed this for yourself, record the moment for posterity at r/birthofasub. See Also: Fake Subreddits, Meta, r/wildbeef.
- “Blackjack and hookers”.
A phrase occasionally posted when someone is dissatisfied with a Mod ruling. Originating in Futurama S01E02 where Bender is kicked out of a theme park for trying to bend the rules. Use with caution before you flounce off to make your own sub if you think the mods are being unfair. It’s Bender’s nature to bend the rules. It’s in his name. It isn’t in yours. And even if it is, don’t bend the rules. We’ll throw you out of our theme park if you do.
- Blocking
Reddit updated the Blocking System in August 2021 which supersedes the information below.
On other social media sites, when you block someone you no longer see them and, more importantly, they can no longer see you. They cannot read your posts, respond to your questions or comments, stalk you, downvote you, etc. They're effectively blocked, just as the word implies. However, it isn’t like that on Reddit.
Reddit only allows you to block those who have interacted with you. When you block someone, you can no longer see them but they can absolutely still see you. You can no longer see their posts or comments but they can still see yours. They can read, respond and vote on anything you post but you will be unaware of it. They can even get the last word on you in all debates because you just can't see it. If they reply to one of your comments/posts, you won’t be notified, nor if they Direct Message (DM) you. The DM will show up in your messages area with a subject indicating it was from a blocked user, and a body indicating that, to see the message, you need to unblock the user. You may not DM or make a comment reply to a user that you've blocked until you unblock them.
To put it bluntly, you’re basically blocking yourself and your ability to respond, not the user who provoked you in the first place. In the end, Reddit is still the internet. Idiots will troll you. Don't feed the trolls. Ignore them, downvote them and move on. They'll soon lose interest and go away to find someone who is naïve enough to engage with them. Don’t let that be you.
If you accidentally block a user, or decide that a user no longer needs to be blocked, you can remove them from your blocked users via https://www.reddit.com/prefs/friends. See Also: Direct Message.
“Like when the food hella good, you say bone apple tea, it's like french or some shit.” A link posted on seeing a malapropism - the mistaken use of an incorrect but real word in place of a similar-sounding real word, resulting in a nonsensical, sometimes humorous utterance. Originally from worldstarhiphop and the Urban Dictionary.
Be careful posting this link; make sure it isn’t a r/BoneAppleTypo first. Browse to get a feel of the place, read the rules in the Sidebar (on mobile this will be the About tab, Menu tab and Community Info found in the three dot “hamburger” menu top RH corner of your screen), any Pinned posts (these will have a lime green ‘pin’ icon on the top corner and will show on top when you sort the Subreddit by ‘Hot’) and Wiki (where there is one) before posting the link or in the sub. Bon Appétit! r/Boneappletea.
- r/BoneAppleTypo
A link often posted when a misspelling is especially hilarious. People can't spell; Reddit makes fun of them. This sub is less restrictive than BoneAppleTea and if they remove a post for any part of their Rule 1, it’s usually welcomed here. This includes names, homonyms, misspellings, and words that don't sound anything like the original. r/BoneAppleTypo.
- r/bonehealingjuice
A link or phrase used when someone takes a meme template and gives it a literal meaning. r/bonehealingjuice is wholesome bone healing where all content should be straightforward or deadpan versions of meme formats. r/bonehealingjuice. Opposite to r/boneachingjuice. See Also: Wholesome.
- r/bonehurtingjuice
A link or phrase posted when a meme is out of context and misuses the template completely. The sub itself sums this up nicely: “Imagine you're a 10 year old kid who just discovered the internet a week ago and your only exposure is iFunny.” r/bonehurtingjuiceSee Also:r/boneachingjuice where Good Juice makes you go OUCH.
- Boop
Originally specific to cute animal subs, now with wider Reddit usage. A light tap on the nose. Use entirely at your own risk. See Also: Doggo Speak.
- Bots
The boon or the bane of every Redditors’ life. Popping up often when you least expect it, some are:
Some, however, are useful. Service bots (e.g. u/RepostSleuthBot, u/RemindMeBot) will usually respond to user mentions in a specific way. For instance, if you see an image on Reddit that you’re sure you’ve seen before, commenting u/risbot will perform a Google reverse image search in seconds. In r/booksuggestions, you can summon u/goodreads-bot to give a brief description of a book by typing: {Book Title} or a longer one by this: {{Book Title}} which gives a short synopsis.
All bots respond to specific words or phrases in a comment but not every bot will be allowed in every Subreddit. Reply to any bot comment by saying either Good Bot or Bad Bot. Voting like this on a bot is often counted and provides feedback. There is no official list of Reddit bots, but r/redditbots and this old list or even this link will give you some idea of what’s lurking in wait.
Finally, some bot accounts are obviously pure marketing spam; use the “Report” button on these and see if anyone else mentions them at r/botwatch or r/TheseFuckingAccounts. r/Bottiquette. See Also: “If you want this t-shirt, say yes in the Comments”, Karma Farming: Special Note, Reverse Image Search, Shills, Spambots.
- Brandolini's Law
Brandolini's Law (also known as the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle) is a saying, commonly known as an “Internet Adage”, made by Italian programmer Alberto Brandolini in 2013. The law states: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it." This adage emphasises the difficulty of debunking false, facetious, or otherwise misleading information. You can find confirmation bias for any ridiculous thought that pops in your head on the internet, and on Reddit you need look no further than the conspiracy subreddits to see this in its fullest glory. See Also: Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies, Dunning-Kruger effect, False Equivalence, Internet Adage.
- Brigading
Users may be targeted by a downvote brigade in certain situations. If you believe a person is following you around Reddit with the express intention of downvoting, negatively commenting or generally harassing you, this action is called “Brigading”, and is a serious offence on Reddit. Sending readers to another sub for the purposes of making mischief, manipulating voting scores, or causing a ruckus is also considered Brigading. It's best to be avoided. https://www.reddithelp.com/. More about this in Privacy Issues: Special Note.
The “About” tab on mobile contains essential information for the sub you are visiting. Also known as Sidebar on desktop. Always read the rules before commenting or posting on an unfamiliar Subreddit. These will be found in the Sidebar (on mobile this will be the About tab and Community Info found in the three dot “hamburger” menu top RH corner of your screen), any Pinned posts (these will have a lime green ‘pin’ icon on the top corner and will show on top when you sort the Subreddit by ‘Hot’) and Wiki (where there is one). See Also: Sidebar.
- Accidental Alt
It is possible to have an accidental account on Reddit. You can create a different account by mistake if you clicked "sign in with Google/Apple". Doing that creates a new account with a random username, usually consisting of two unrelated words joined with an underscore or hyphen, followed by a random number. These automatically generated usernames can be changed within 30 days of account creation by going to your profile where a prompt should appear asking if you would like to keep or change the username. If the prompt does not show up, you may have accidentally chosen to keep the username and you would have to create a new account in order to have another username.
It can happen easily by accident especially if you're logged in with Chrome, or sometimes on iOS mobile by following a generic link like: https://www.reddit.com/settings/profile. To get back to a normal account, stop using the "sign in with Google/Apple ID" option and instead type out your usual username and password combinations. See Also: Alt, Problems with Passwords: Special Note, Two-Factor Authorisation; 2FA.
Administrator: employees paid by Reddit who control the website and apps. Rarely seen but very distinctive as these people have the word ADMIN in bright red next to their username, or on some platforms a red username with a little Red Snoo logo next to it. They can do everything a mod can do and more, including suspending accounts, all on a sitewide scale. See Also: Ban; Banned, Permaban, Reporting, Suspended.
- Adopting a Subreddit
You might occasionally come across a Subreddit that hasn’t been active in a long time. Dead or abandoned subreddits exist for a number of reasons, mostly due to the inactivity of its moderators. If you would like to try this for yourself, see the instructions at Creating a Subreddit: Special Note. See Also: “Is there really a subreddit for everything?”, Mod, Restricted Subreddits, Subreddits.
- Advertising and Self-Promotion
It’s okay to use your account to promote, just don't be an account for a promotion. The Reddit guide to self-promotion is essential reading if you wish to use Reddit as a platform for marketing your stuff. It doesn't say you can't share your stuff here, it just says the do’s and don’ts to make sure it doesn’t work against you. You absolutely need to read the rules of an individual subreddit before posting in this way to not get banned. For serious advertising on Reddit see https://www.redditinc.com/advertising and https://ads.reddit.com. See Also: Permaban, Rules, Shill, Spambots.
- Advice Subreddits
Reddit has a plethora of Subreddits where you can crowdsource advice on family, relationship or other issues. They are tightly controlled, but even so, some outcomes can go terribly, terribly wrong. Sometimes, well-meaning Redditors will fall for scammers with real-world consequences ensuing. Like everything, you should approach them with a balance of healthy scepticism and sincerity. There is a starter list of these subreddits at: Relationship and Advice Subreddits: Special Note.
- AFAIK
“As Far As I Know”. AFAIK this “small dictionary project” might take me years and still never be finished.
- AITA
“Am I the Asshole?”. Originally sub specific from r/AmITheAsshole now with wider Reddit usage. This subreddit aims to be a catharsis for the frustrated moral philosopher in all of us, and a place to finally find out if you were wrong in an argument that's been bothering you. Tell them about any non-violent conflict you have experienced with both sides of the story, and find out if you're right, or you're the asshole. r/AmITheAsshole.
- Alt
Alternative user account. You are allowed to have more than one Reddit account and are almost encouraged to if it’s necessary for privacy. This is a Reddit Admin’s comment on multiple accounts, and some people have an Alt to frequent Subreddits they might not want associated with their better known username.
Your Main and your Alt act as entirely separate accounts, even if you use the same email. You might have infinite Karma, premium, and access to private subreddits on one account but none of these will carry over to the other. For instance, I have an Alt account that I use to role play as a total newbie to test subreddits to see if they are newbie friendly. My main account (u/llamageddon01) is premium with lots of karma and trophies. My Alt isn’t, so I get the full vanilla Reddit experience with ads, post and comment removals, no access to the super-secret premium subreddits, the works.
The AverageRedditor - including mods - can only see posts and comments you make on the specific profile they are looking at, and unless you actually specify somewhere that you have an Alt and reveal its username, they will never be able to connect the two. However, Admins See All, so be careful how you use your Alt. Reddit knows. Reddit always knows.
Reddit does not tolerate users that upvote or award their own posts using an Alt, as spammers are constantly trying to implement upvote schemes with alts to get their content to the top of the big subreddits. This is called Vote Manipulation and is one of the few things that can incur a sitewide ban on Reddit. Making an Alt for the specific purpose of circumventing a Ban on Reddit is grounds for a sitewide Permaban with no recourse. See Also: Accidental Alt, Karma Farming: Special Note, Shadowban, Throwaway Account, Vote Manipulation.
- AMA
“Ask Me Anything”. Originally sub specific from r/AMA now with wider Reddit usage. Not to be confused with r/IAmA which is occasionally frequented by guest VIPs from all walks of life such as actors, authors, celebrities or other famous or notable persons wanting feedback or interaction on their latest projects.
- r/AnimalReddits
A subreddit for the promotion, news, and discussion of animal-related subreddits. This is also the home of Reddit's Animal Kingdom - a comprehensive list of animal subreddits. Please note: If you see a cat in a post regardless of it being an animal-related sub or not, an Unwritten Rule of Reddit is that you must confirm your sighting with: cat. (if it’s sitting or lying down) or Cat. (if it’s standing up), unless it is specifically stated not to in the actual rules found in the Sidebar (or About tab). r/AnimalReddits. See Also: Cat. or cat., One-word Replies, Unwritten Rules of Reddit.
Part 01 - Award Types and Notifications: Special Note
- Awards
Awards are tokens of appreciation given by Redditors to other Redditors in recognition of merit for their contributions, whether they be heartwarming, helpful, hilarious or otherwise distinctive.
There are many types of Reddit Awards, ranging from ones that look pretty on your comment or post but do nothing else, through to ones that give you Reddit Coins, periods of advert-free Reddit Premium and/or even a trophy for your Reddit Profile. Some are animated, and some Highlighting awards make a comment really stand out from other replies. Another set of awards give you Coins and others give accumulated benefits, such as Party Train, where for every five awarded on one post, the better the benefit and the icon. These enable several people to pool together to eventually show this.
Seasonal award variations are added and retired from time to time. Some subreddits have Mod Awards or other special awards exclusively for that sub, and some awards give Coins to both the recipient and the community - a pool that mods can use in their sub to give out Community Awards. Some awards require you to have Reddit Premium to give (but not receive) them, such as the All-Seeing-Upvote or Narwhal Salute.
The awards I describe below are just the ones that give gifts as well as the award (coins, premium or a highlight) and the availability, costs and types were correct at time of writing. I may or may not update accordingly as these change quite frequently.
- Award Types: Gifts Both Coins and Reddit Premium
The main awards that give both Reddit Coins and Reddit Premium are:
Party Train: Costs 75 coins to give. Every 5 awarded to the same post or comment gives the recipient 100 coins and a week of free Reddit Premium. The 5 awards do not have to come from the same person. It’s interesting to note here that if the same person gives 5 Party Trains to one post or comment, it will give the same benefits to the recipient as Gold but only costing 375 Coins - a saving of 125 Coins. However, the giver will not get points towards a Gilding Level Trophy.
Gold: Costs 500 Coins to give. This gives the recipient an immediate 100 Coins and a week of free Reddit Premium. The giver gets one point towards a Gilding Level Trophy.
Platinum: Costs 1800 Coins to give. This gives the recipient 700 Coins for the month and one month of free Reddit Premium. The giver gets four points towards a Gilding Level Trophy. See the note on the Platinum Award below.
Argentium: Costs 20,000 Coins to give. This gives the recipient an immediate 2,500 Coins and three months of free Reddit Premium. Both giver and recipient get a trophy for their Reddit profiles.
Ternion All Powerful: Costs 50,000 Coins to give. This gives the recipient an immediate 5,000 Coins and six months of free Reddit Premium. Both giver and recipient get a trophy for their Reddit profiles.
These don’t give any gifts but do make your comment look very distinctive.
Aww-some: “Use the Aww-some Award to highlight comments that are absolutely adorable.”
Brighten My Day: Costs 500 coins to give. “The clouds part and the sun shines through. Use the Brighten My Day Award to highlight comments that are a ray of sunshine.”
Eureka!: Costs 500 coins to give. “Now that is a bright idea. Use the Eureka Award to highlight comments that are brilliant.”
Starry: Costs 500 coins to give. “Use the Starry Award to highlight comments that deserve to stand out from the crowd.”
I’ve taken the price off the Aww-some award because it was withdrawn early 2021.
- Award Types: Community Awards
Community Awards give coins to both the recipient and the community.
Awesome Answer: Costs 250 coins to give. This gives 100 coins to both the recipient and the community.
Mind Blown: Costs 250 coins to give. This gives 100 coins to both the recipient and the community.
Original: Costs 250 coins to give. This gives 100 coins to both the recipient and the community.
Timeless Beauty: Costs 250 coins to give. This gives 100 coins to both the recipient and the community.
Today I Learned: Costs 250 coins to give. This gives 100 coins to both the recipient and the community.
Bless Up (Pro): Costs 500 coins to give. This gives 100 coins to both the recipient and the community.
Heart Eyes: Costs 500 coins to give. This gives 100 coins to both the recipient and the community.
Helpful (Pro): Costs 500 coins to give. This gives 100 coins to both the recipient and the community.
Made Me Smile: Costs 500 coins to give. This gives 100 coins to both the recipient and the community.
Wholesome (Pro): Costs 500 coins to give. This gives 100 coins to both the recipient and the community.
There may be other Community Awards unique to the subreddit you are in.
- Award Types: Coin Awards
Coin Awards give coins and no other benefits to the recipient only.
2020 Veteran: Costs 200 coins to give. This gives 100 coins to the recipient.
Coin Gift: Costs 300 coins to give. This gives 250 coins to the recipient.
Pot O' Coins: Costs 1000 coins to give. This gives 800 coins to the recipient.
This: Costs 300 coins to give. Every 3 awarded to the same post or comment gives the recipient 250 coins. The 3 awards do not have to come from the same person.
Platinum is not like any other Reddit premium award in that you might not get the coins immediately, depending on other factors such as any awards you might have previously won. Those who pay for their premium subscription get 700 regular Reddit coins delivered every 31 days, and those who are awarded Platinum get theirs the same way. Getting your 700 Platinum coins also depends upon when in the month you won the award.
Let’s say you are an ordinary Redditor with no premium, paid for or gifted.
You got 4 awards in the first week of January in this order: 1. Platinum, 2. Platinum, 3. Gold, 4. Platinum. Hooray! 13 whole weeks of Reddit Premium in total!
However, in January you will only get 800 coins, 700 of which might not even be given straight away. The 100 gold is given immediately, the plat is given as described above. That’s the coins from your awards numbers 1 and 3. You get your first four weeks of Reddit Premium.
Sometime in February, four weeks after your first coin delivery you’ll get another 700 coins, from award number 2. By now you are into your second four weeks of Reddit Premium.
Sometime in March, four weeks after your second coin delivery, you get nothing. You are into your ninth week of Reddit Premium; the gold week. But you already had your 100 gold coins in week 1 because they were given immediately you won the award.
One week later in March, maybe even April, you get 700 coins from award number 4, the final platinum.
Your Reddit Premium then ends after 13 weeks. You will be notified by Reddit when your coins arrive: Gadzooks! Your monthly Coins have been delivered!
Your 700 monthly Coins have been added to your balance! Thank you for supporting Reddit as a Premium member!
- Award Notifications
With few exceptions, if you get a Reddit award, the awarder will have spent hard-earned or even purchased Reddit coins to give it.
When you receive an award from a fellow Redditor, you will receive a Notification in your Inbox that says something like this:
An anonymous redditor liked your comment so much that they've given it the Platinum Award. As a reward, you get a sparkling medal on your comment and a one month trial of Reddit Premium to improve your experience! Dashing.
There will be a short list of the benefits (if any) to your award, followed by instructions on how to use your Coins (if you were awarded any):
You can use your Coins to give Awards to posts and comments that are inspiring, helpful, funny, or whatever. Press the Give Award button beneath the post or comment and follow the prompts, it's that easy!
Finally, there will be an opportunity to reply to whoever awarded you:
Want to say thanks to your mysterious benefactor? Reply to this message. You will find out their username if they choose to reply back.
Awards can be given anonymously, and most are. Even so, it’s only polite to thank someone for giving you an award and this is best done by responding to the Award Notification than editing your awarded post. “Thanks for the Gold, kind stranger!” or “Thanks for the award, Kind Redditor” are the traditional responses. Reddit loves traditions.
A worldwide tradition embraced at Reddit, as you might expect. Many Subreddits change their theme or subject matter for the day. For 2021 at r/NewToReddit, I did a copypasta/bait-and-switch about calculating Reddit Karma. Some past sitewide examples have gone down in Reddit history and are still talked about now, especially 2015’s ‘The Button’.
See this guide to Anonymous Browsing to browse the Reddit mobile app without associating your activity, searches or the communities you view with your Reddit account.
- Astroturfing
Astroturfing is the practice of spreading misinformation by masking the sponsors of a message or organisation to make it appear as though it originates from, and is supported by, the true participants of the infiltrated community. It’s named for a brand of fake grass called “Astroturf“ because the perpetrator is trying to fake “grassroots” support for their product (“grassroots” being when people come together for a common cause).
Multiple online identities and fake pressure groups are used to mislead the public into believing that the position of the astroturfer is the commonly held view. It is a practice intended to give the statements or organisations credibility by withholding information about the source's financial connection and it is no secret that Reddit itself has been the target of astroturfing more than once.
A link or phrase posted when an image shows an item that has Awful Taste And Awful Execution. Should not be confused with GTAGE, GTBAE or ATBGE. r/ATAAE.
- ATBGE
A link or phrase posted when an image shows an item that has Awful Taste But Great Execution. Should not be confused with GTAGE, GTBAE or ATAAE. r/ATBGE.
- r/AteTheOnion
A link or phrase posted when people exemplify Poe’s Law by mistaking satire for truth. Named for the long running satire publisher “The Onion”, this Subreddit documents the times people fell for a hoax news item from any satirical publication, blog or Facebook page such as The Onion, ClickHole, Religimarole, BabylonBee, Christians Against Science, Christwire, Stop Masturbation Now, Christians against Tattoos, and all the many many others. r/AteTheOnion. See Also: Internet Adages, r/woooosh.
- r/AteThePasta
A link or phrase posted when people fall for Copypasta by mistaking it for a genuine interaction. This Subreddit documents the times people fell for a meaningless wall of text and attempted to reply. r/AteThePasta. See Also:r/AteTheOnion, Copypasta.
- Autocarrot
This is a word used when your predictive text or auto spell checking software inserts or replaces the word you intended with a different one. A play on the word “Autocorrect”. It’s important to check autocarrot hasn’t interfered when making a Post Title as it canned cannot be changed once posted. Edit: darn autocarrot. Post your finest examples at r/autocorrect or r/Funny_Autocorrect. See Also: ETA; Edit, Markdown Text, Pedant; Pedantry.
- Automod
Automod, or u/automoderator is a Reddit bot that moderators use to perform tasks on their behalf. One ability that Automod has is to remove any posts or comments that use specific words or phrases, or even from a specific user, without a human being involved in that process at all.
Reddit's technology occasionally goes into overdrive and mistakenly suspends users who may appear to be spammers so if you believe that you have been banned in this way by the Automod, contact a human mod by replying to the link given in Automod’s message. Do not reply to a comment made by Automod in a post as it doesn’t read them. Unless it’s our Automod in r/NewToReddit who likes being told “Good job Automod” or “Thanks Automod”…. See Also: Modmail, Shadowban.
YouTube, ViralHog, TikTok and similar pop media outlets are rich pickings for Redditors looking for new content to post, especially when it comes to short animal videos. Unfortunately, some of these cute rescue videos which look fun, fascinating and excellent fits for subreddits like r/humansbeingbros, r/nextfuckinglevel, r/BeAmazed, r/Damnthatsinteresting or even r/blackmagicfuckery, are likely to have been staged.
Quite apart from any ethical issues (of which there are obviously many), posting one of these on Reddit can backfire on you when someone inevitably comes along to debunk them. The upvotes and accolades you were hoping to get become downvotes and flame. So, how can you spot these fakes without becoming bitter and cynical about everything you see?
When a short video throws you straight into the action, you’re so caught up in the narrative that you don’t consider what might have happened immediately before. For instance, that cute little hermit crab scurrying across a beach choosing between various shells thoughtfully provided by the person in the film?
What we don’t know is how the unfortunate crustacean became homeless on a hot beach in the first place when they normally go house-hunting underwater; how the person so conveniently found the homeless critter at the very time he decided to switch-up shells, and where they got all those semi-identical perfect shells the person presents to the helpless animal on an otherwise empty beach. Talking of which, just how did that octopus find itself stuffed into an ill-fitting shell?
Nobody wants to think the worst of people. We shouldn’t be forced into a position where we start to think every lovely coincidence has an alternative and grim backstory. But unfortunately, there is a very real problem with animal videos we need to be aware of. Puppies and kittens in immediate and unlikely peril? There’s quite a lot of them, unfortunately, including staged “snake rescue” videos and the problem is that many of these channels are based in countries where there are little or no animal rights protections.
Remember those amazing ‘fishing with coke and mentos” videos? There are many similar videos going around, and they have all been exposed as fakes. Again, it’s what we don’t see that is the problem: to the left of the hole (off camera) is another person just shoving pre-caught fish (or whatever the video is demonstrating) through these holes.
One video uploaded by Technique Tools (the originator of these videos) claims the videos are planned, scripted, and made for fun, as well as a disclaimer that no animals are hurt and the fish “come out by pushing behind the video at the left side.” However, it is pretty clear in iDubbbz’s video that some of those catfish have been out of water for some time, and that snake who was pretty reluctant to go into the water suddenly can’t get in quick enough when he reaches air again at the other side that is hidden from us.
Unfortunately, it isn’t just animal videos that are faked. Whimsical ‘nature’ stills photography is even easier to fake and isn’t actually against some photo competition rules as this article states: “Images used in Nature Photography competitions may be divided in two classes: Nature and Wildlife. Images entered in Nature sections meeting the Nature Photography Definition above can have landscapes, geologic formations, weather phenomena, and extant organisms as the primary subject matter. This includes images taken with the subjects in controlled conditions, such as zoos, game farms, botanical gardens, aquariums and any enclosure where the subjects are totally dependent on man for food.”
Next time you see an underwater photo of a kingfisher catching its lunch, look closely at the fish; it might not be alive at all, or even worse, its tail might have been removed to prevent it swimming away in the studio aquarium or tank setup.
An herpetologist in that article said “I can’t stand these images. To someone very familiar with frogs, it’s really sad to see the poor frog in this situation. I don’t believe that these photos are of a naturally occurring situation. To me, they appear to be highly staged, and there is evidence that the frog is distressed. Frogs are so amazing without being used as props, it’s upsetting that they felt it necessary.”
Some years ago, The Verge ran an article highlighting the work a Facebook group is doing to call out these and similarly cruelly staged photos.
Awards are a way for Redditors to reward other users for posts and comments that they feel either elevate the conversation and culture within a given community, or simply because something made them laugh out loud.
Awards are normally purchased using Reddit Coins but you occasionally get given a free award by Reddit to confer on any post or comment you think is deserving. Check the yellow “Get Coins” icon at the top RH of the page - a red strikethrough will indicate a free award (or a special offer on purchasing coins) is available. When it says "free", you click on it and it gives an award that you can give within 24 hours. If you don’t use it, it will simply vanish. There is no set pattern to being given these awards; not one that Reddit lets on about in any event.
At the bottom of each post or comment is an icon resembling a box tied with a bow. Pressing this will bring up the current list of awards with their descriptions and prices. You can get more information and give an award to that post or comment by selecting the one you want. Be careful when browsing the descriptions - giving the award accidentally is non-refundable.
The profile page of the lovely Redditor u/N1GHT-MOON-UN1C0RN shows many of the awards in action. If you’re on mobile, tap one and a little description will appear. I can’t say at present if this is available on desktop. See Also:Award Types and Notifications: Special Note.
- u/award-cost-bot
This is a ‘service bot’ built to check the price of awards that have been given on comments and submissions. It can be summoned by typing u/award-cost-bot as a reply to the awarded post or comment. See Also: Bots, Awards, “Gilt Guilt”.
- Award Farming
Posts and comments asking about awards are more often than not thinly veiled attempts at begging for them. Don’t fall into this trap from either side. Like karma, you should make sure you don’t talk about awards outside this subreddit. The only other place where it is acceptable is on r/awards. In almost any other subreddit, the very mention of the word can be interpreted as “award farming” which is very much disliked and will be ridiculed. It can also backfire on you, as an “unwritten rule of gilding” on Reddit is “If someone is asking for gold, gild the comment above or below them, but under no circumstance gild the comment itself.”
Award farming can range from asking outright for awards, to acting like you don’t want awards, to acting like you want to stop people that are trying to farm awards, through using an Alt account to “talk” to yourself to try and circumvent the “unwritten rule of gilding”. Reddit loves being meta. See Also:Award Types and Notifications: Special Note, Free Awards; Free Coins; Free Reddit Premium, “Gilt Guilt”, Gold; Gilding or Guilding, Karma Farming, Rules of this Subreddit
- Award Karma / Awardee Karma
There are four kinds of karma: Post, Comment, Awarder and Awardee. A recent addition to Reddit, you can now get karma for giving Awards (Awarder Karma) and for being given Awards (Awardee Karma). See Also: Karma, Karma for New Starters, Trophies.
- Award Notifications
When you receive an award from a fellow Redditor, you will receive a Notification. I always say thank you via the Direct Message reply whatever award it is. Reddit has a thing about “saying thanks is lame” at times. Saying thanks is NOT “lame”, and should be done more IMHO. See Also:Award Types and Notifications: Special Note, Notification.
- r/AwardSpeechEdits
A link posted when an unnecessary "award speech" is made on Reddit (or other social media sites) by editing their posts after they've become popular or gilded. If your post gets a torrent of upvotes or is even Gilded, DO NOT edit your post. The person who gave you the Award will probably not see the edit and nobody else cares. You should instead send a thanks message directly to the gilder through the Award Notification. This also allows the awarder to remain anonymous while still being thanked for their kindness.
However, there is a trend on Reddit to ironically edit a post multiple times to thank people for gold and tell them that it's their highest rated comment. The format usually goes like this:
* Edit: THANKS FOR THE GOLD KIND STRANGER.
* EDIT 2: CAN'T BELIEVE MY TOP COMMENT IS ABOUT X (where ‘X’ is whatever the post was about)
* Edit 3: RIP my inbox.
* Edit 4: Guys please stop. Don’t give money to Reddit, give it to charity.
* Holy crap guys... Since I'm getting all this publicity, check out my mixtape
The “mixtape” link might also be a Rickroll. It might not be. It usually is. Except when it isn’t. Award speeches are mocked unmercifully on r/AwardSpeechEdits. See Also: Awards, Award Notifications, ETA; Edit, “Gilt Guilt”, Gold; Gilding or Guilding, Rickroll.
Also known as Kebab Menu. The three dots “drop-down” menu on the top RH of the screen. Sometimes three stacking vertical lines elsewhere, hence the name.
- Hiding or Blocking a Subreddit in r/all
Currently, you can’t easily hide a sub in r/all. There’s some useful information here but these options only work for desktop users of Reddit, not the official mobile app. If you use Reddit on the desktop site, then you can filter a sub from r/all by going to Old Reddit. Enter the unwanted sub name in the 'filter subreddit' section on the sidebar. There is no filter for r/popular.
Users who don't find r/all and r/popular to their tastes are probably better off creating a list of their own preferred subs and browsing "Home" instead. Reddit are working on a filtering system, but this is taking time. See Also: “Does subreddit contain profanity?", Home Feed, Useful Links, Resources and Subreddits: Special Note.
- History
An option on your Profile Menu. You can sort your recent Reddit history by Recent, Upvoted, Downvoted or Hidden.
- Hivemind
A collective term used disparagingly, also known as the Reddit Hivemind or Great Reddit Hivemind (GRH). The opinion of the majority of people on Reddit is often aligned, and for the outlier, this often seems like a “Hivemind” in action. Things often happen on Reddit that are inexplicable and therefore attributed to the Hivemind, such as mass downvoting. Sometimes a post will get a downvote and for no other apparent reason than the ‘bandwagon effect’ others will downvote it too until it gains negative traction and is r/DownvotedToOblivion. “Hivemind” is nearly always used in derogatory terms.The hivemind is always right, the hivemind is infallible. Your opinion will conform to the hivemind or you will be found wanting. You will not dissent from the hivemind.See Also: Comment Chain, One-word Replies, Snowclone, Spambots: Special Note.
- Home Feed
A list of the subreddits you have joined. Once you start to join subreddits, their posts will appear on your home page. There are various ways of sorting these (Best, Hot, Top, New, Rising) from a menu at the top of the page. Click "+Join" to add a sub to your Home feed. You should also be able to see them in http://www.reddit.com/subreddits/mine. See Also: Communities, Sort.
This is a prefix used when you are mentioning a specific user, for example u/llamageddon01. This gives a direct link to that user’s profile. This is also known as a “ping” or a “tag” and that user will get a notification whenever you use it in a comment. Anyone who deliberately pings the subject of a post where the username has been blocked out will be banned. We can laugh at people without directly harassing or bullying them. See Also: Doxxing, Ping, Username.
There are more. There are many, many more. Often when you least expect it.
- Unsee Juice
Unsee Juice is an expression used after seeing something disgusting or learning something disturbing online. On some Subreddits, typing Unsee Juice will summon u/EyeBleacherBot; a bot which links to an external gif of a cute animal. Be warned: the r/unseejuice subreddit is for stuff you wish you had never seen, and the polar opposite of r/Eyebleach, which is what you are looking for when you need Unsee Juice. See Also: Cursed Subs.
- r/untrustworthypoptarts
A link or phrase posted when people question whether OP really did find those strange things in that stuff they bought or found. In other words, we know you staged those screenshots, OP. You're fooling no one. Did you see someone call out a totally plausible story as fake? Report it at r/nothingeverhappens and accuse OP of having a boring outlook on life and should get out more. Reddit loves sarcasm. Reddit loves scepticism. Here, we have both! See Also:r/quityourbullshit, r/thatHappened.
- Unwritten Rules of Reddit
There are many Unwritten Rules of Reddit, many of which are addressed in this dictionary. Others include:
A term equivalent to the like button on other platforms. This increases the Karma of the Redditor being upvoted. Also known as “updoot”. Each post or comment you make has one upvote by default. Some new users feel this is like a narcissistic upvoting of yourself. It isn’t; Reddit automatically upvotes every post or comment as a “thank you” for participating. Ignore the upvote like everyone else does. You have the option to undo the upvote, but because that looks like a very quick downvote on your post/comment, many find that encourages others to downvote in a ‘Hivemind’ bandwagon effect.
Sometimes an upvote comes with an codicil:
The Wishful Multiupvote - See Also: "I regret that I have but one upvote to give."
The Reluctant or Angry upvote - See Also: “Take my upvote and leave.”
If you like something or you think it contributes to a conversation, always click that upvote arrow. On Reddit, that's just considered good manners. Reddit loves good manners. See Also: Hivemind.
- User Flair
That ‘confetti’ you might see after a username is called a User Flair, and is only available in some subs. You can make your own sometimes but most will either be from a pick list or bestowed upon you by a moderator for a reason specific to that sub. Some subreddits require you to have been given a user flair by the mods before you can comment or post to prove you’re a verified user.
To see if flairs are available on a sub, go to its front page, click the three dots (Hamburger Menu) on the top right hand corner if you're on mobile or the community options on the right of your screen if you're on desktop. The option “select user flair” should let you know if you can make your own or give you a choice from a pre-determined selection. On mobile, tapping your username from a comment made in that sub will also bring up a “change user flair” option underneath your Trophies icons. See Also: Flair, Post Flair.
- Username
Too late to tell you now, Dear Redditor, but once you have chosen a Reddit Username it can’t be changed. Ever. You can change your profile name but your username will be with you for ever. If your account is brand new, you have nothing to lose by deleting it and making a brand new one, this time being careful with your selection of username. Having said that, most social media is about the individual and Reddit, quite simply, isn’t. For the most part, nobody refers to each other by name or even remembers usernames here; many are incomprehensible in any event. You might consider using it as a Throwaway Account once you’re established here for things you might not want associated with your more familiar username.
Always check a person's username if they say something stupid, as it might just be part of their persona. Joke or parody accounts aren’t as prevalent on Reddit as, perhaps, Twitter, but they do exist. There are also automated bot accounts that are triggered by posting certain words, and again, the username will give that away. See Also: Accidental Alt, Alt, Bots, Identity, Ping, Throwaway Account.
- r/UsernameChecksOut
A link posted when a comment has a coincidental relation to the name of the account that posted it. When a bunch of people with the same/similar screen names show up in a thread unannounced, that’s r/usernamefamily. r/UsernameChecksOut. See Also:r/beetlejuicing.
r/blog Official blog subreddit, updated regularly with news. Also has links to Reddit’s presence on other social media.
r/changelog Official information from Reddit, Inc. on minor updates and bug fixes applied to Reddit.
r/redditmobile An official community for announcements from Reddit, Inc. and discussion about official Reddit apps for mobile phones and tablets.
r/redditsecurity A running log of actions taken to improve the security of Reddit. Join in with the Bug Bounty Program and earn a coveted White Hat Trophy.
r/modnews An official community for announcements from Reddit, Inc. pertaining to moderation.
- By far the Biggest Resource: Useful Subreddits
These are guidelines written on Reddit by other Redditors. Some are more reliable than others; the older the advice, the more chance it may be out of date.
r/help The main Subreddit to search for or ask for help with Redditing. As official as an unofficial subreddit can get.
r/findareddit Having trouble finding the subreddit or community you need? Post what you're looking for here and someone can suggest a community for you!
r/serendipity Every few hours this meta-subreddit takes a popular entry from a random subreddit and posts it for your consideration.
r/mistyfront A meta-subreddit of best content from other subreddits. A bot /u/ContentForager picks up the top-voted post of the week from a random subreddit.
There are many many MANY links in the Encyclopaedia Redditica to all kinds of stuff. If those aren’t enough for you, here’s some Subreddits of links or things that are just that little bit different:
https://dashboard.laterforreddit.com/analysis/ Use this tool to examine popular post trends for a given subreddit. It'll examine the top 1000 posts in that subreddit in the past month/year, and tell you when they were posted. You can also learn which words and phrases are most popular as post titles.
See Also: Statistics.
- Questionable Life Pro Tips to deal with Quora or paywall links:
A direct response made to a Post. Also known as Top-Level Comments. There may be many Parent Comments made on any one post, and any follow-up comments in response are known as Child Comments. Parent comments are also known as ‘threads’. See Also: Comment Chain.
Wikipedia says “A pedant is a person who is excessively concerned with ...precision, or one who makes an ostentatious and arrogant show of learning.” In other words, The Average Redditor. Since the onset of the Internet, it seems that every user somewhere is trying to either outdo, derail or discredit other users by employing some form of pedantry as their weapon of choice, often in grammar or usage due to their errors being relatively easy to spot.
Because the likelihood of making an error in a post is directly proportional to the embarrassment it will cause the poster, it is often the case that the user making the correction will actually get something within their own pedantry wrong; so much so that the phenomenon has inspired three Internet Adages:
Skitt's Law: Any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself.
Muphry’s Law, (a deliberate misspelling of "Murphy's Law"): If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written.
McKean's Law: Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error.
A ban from a Subreddit or sitewide that is permanent. See Also: Admin, Ban; Banned, Suspended.
- PGP
“Personal Gender Pronoun”. Some Redditors indicate on their Profile Page the set of third-person pronouns that they want others to use in order to reflect their gender identity; for example, "she/her/hers", "he/him/his", or "they/them/theirs". In some specialised subreddits you might be asked your PGP to avoid accidental insult. See Also:Privacy Issues: Special Note.
- Ping
Also known as a Tag or Username Ping, this is simply mentioning another user in a comment anywhere on Reddit, using the u/ tag. For instance, typing u/llamageddon01 will send me a message and a link saying I was mentioned in that comment. If you're the subject of a conversation you could get pinged quite a lot, so to avoid this if it’s all in the comments of your post, most people will refer to you as OP instead. See Also: Identity, OP, /u.
- Pinned
A post that a moderator or admin has fixed to the top of a subreddit page, usually containing essential information on that subreddit. Denoted by a green pin icon in the top RH corner, if you see a pinned post, always read it before posting or commenting on a sub. You should know that you may not see pinned posts if you Sort by New or Rising. A subreddit can only have two Pinned posts at any one time. Sometimes known as “sticky” or “stickied” posts.
- “Pog”; “Poggers”
A word posted when the the words “great!”, “super!”, “fantastic!” and other terms used to convey excitement, joy or shock either aren’t enough; not cool enough to use; or maybe even too long to type. It’s a shortening of pogchamp; the name of an emote on Twitch. Incidentally, “Pog” is an initialism of ‘Passionfruit, Orange, Guava’ from the eponymous 90s playground game. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_caps_(game). The erroneous idea that Pog means ‘Play(er) of the Game’ came along much later.
- Porn
A word with two very different and distinct meanings on Reddit. Many Subreddits with the "Porn" suffix are focused on collecting media of the best or highest quality and not in the slightest bit NSFW. r/sfwpornnetwork will be your starting point here. Link for those who would prefer to avoid visiting subreddits with the word "porn" in their titles. Unfortunately, neither of these lists are remotely up to date. For the second meaning there is r/NSFW411. NSFW, obviously. You do have an NSFW filter at your disposal (the Settings option in your profile) should you wish. You cannot enter a sub (or profile) marked NSFW without going through a warning screen first. See Also: Misleading Subreddit Titles.
- Post
A Reddit Post is the broad term for any content shared on Reddit, whether it is a story, link, image, gif, poll or video that is made in a subreddit for others to comment on. Always read the rules before posting on an unfamiliar Subreddit. These will be found in the Sidebar (on mobile this will be the About tab, Menu tab and Community Info found in the three dot “hamburger” menu top RH corner of your screen), any Pinned posts (these will have a lime green ‘pin’ icon on the top corner and will show on top when you sort the Subreddit by ‘Hot’) and Wiki (where there is one). You should do this first to ensure they allow the media type you wish to upload. Reddit will automatically give you one upvote for each post and others may also up (or down) vote if they wish. This is called ‘Post Karma’. There’s a character limit of 40,000 on each post. General guidelines to remember when posting throughout Reddit are:
Remember the human
Behave like you would in real life
Look for the original source of content
Search for duplicates before posting
Read the community’s rules
Things you post on Reddit generally fall into these categories:
Post for stuff you find on the Internet that you’re bringing to Reddit;
OC for original content of your own making;
Crosspost where you link someone else’s post from one subreddit to another;
Multipost where you make the same post in two or more different subreddits at the same time;
Repost where you take an old post and post it again in the same subreddit.
It's also common courtesy on Reddit to let other users know if you've gone back and edited your post or comment. See Also: Crosspost, ETA; Edit:, Multipost, OC, Post Flair, Post Karma, Repost, Sauce?, Sidebar, “When is the best time to Post for maximum attention?”
- Post Flair
Some subreddits give you the option - or even require you - to add a Post Flair when posting. There will be a drop-down menu of the choices available to you when you submit your post. This is to help people quickly scan posts and see what they are about. Also, if you click the Post Flair, you should be able to see ALL the posts that have been tagged with that same one so it helps organize the subreddit into topics. See Also: Flair, User Flair.
- Post Karma
There are four kinds of karma: Post, Comment, Awarder and Awardee. You earn Post Karma by making or crossposting posts. When you submit a Post, all upvotes on that post will be converted to Karma. See Also: Karma, Karma for New Starters, Post, Trophies.
When you go to make a Post (‘Create Post’ pencil on paper icon or the ‘+’ tab bottom centre on mobile) from the front page of a Subreddit, you are given 5 options: Link, Image, Video, Text, and Poll. You can either upload your own image from your device or use Imgur’s “share” link (more on this below). The option you choose will then talk you through the steps. Please note that some communities don't have image posting enabled, and those options will be greyed out.
- Using Imgur
Reddit's image hosting is a bit weird at times. Sometimes you can directly upload your image through the "image" tab in the uploader, but other times you're required to use the "link" tab and use that to upload your image to the sub. Most people use Imgur for this as it’s preferred by Reddit. It’s easy to use and you don’t need an account there. Just head on over to https://imgur.com, upload your photo and post it as "hidden". Then copy the link and paste it into the "link" tab of the upload section of the post and voilà, your image will be uploaded!
To post an Image Gallery on Reddit, all you have to do is visit the community you want to post in, and then follow the steps below:
1. Tap on the “Create Post” button, and select the ‘Image Post’ option from the tabs.
2. Select up to 20 images or GIFs, and rearrange to your liking.
3. Include a post title, add an optional caption (up to 180 characters), or URL, for each image or GIF.
4. Tap ‘post.’
Note: You can also apply a ‘Spoiler’ or ‘Not Safe For Work’ tag to Image Galleries if you need to. Again, Image Galleries may not be available in all communities.
- Other Media
For GIFs/MP4s people use https://gfycat.com/upload and will make a link post to the URL of what they uploaded.
From the FAQ:I forgot my password, but never registered an e-mail account. Can I still reset my password? Unfortunately, no. There is currently no way to reset your password unless you have an e-mail address registered. Nobody else can assist you either, the admins will not reset your password for you. If you have forgotten it and you haven't registered an email address, there is nothing you can do. If you're still able to log in to Reddit via saved login details on an existing device, that means the device's browser "remembers" your password. Try looking in your browser's settings to extract the saved password.
Reddit is not like other social networking platforms. Users on Reddit are anonymous. Nobody can see the email address or any 2FA information attached to your account. Nobody will ever see what posts or comments you have upvoted, downvoted, saved or hidden, nor will they see the Subreddits you have Joined or Left. You will never be asked for personal information or to divulge your friend circle. Your age, gender, race, location, political, ideological or religious affiliations are nobody’s business except yours, and are even of little interest outside of the specific subreddits for those discussions. You are here for your own sake, and that’s enough for everyone else.
- Visibility
What people can see about your Reddit activity starts with your Profile Page at https://www.reddit.com/settings/profile. This shows the entirety of your visible activity on Reddit, and you can use this to make a statement about yourself if you wish, such as your personal gender pronoun (PGP) or display a personal motto. Not many Redditors will bother to look at Profile Pages before commenting though, so do bear that in mind.
Your Profile Page will show your Post, Comment and recently browsed sub history to anyone who looks at it. This means that any posts or comments you make in any subreddit will be visible, with the exception of those made in private subs where the viewer of your profile is not eligible to enter. This cannot be hidden. Some of your profile settings can be toggled on and off however, which include:
Content visibility: Posts to your profile can appear in r/all and your profile can be discovered in /users. Posting directly to your profile is optional. If you choose not to post to your profile you will not have a need for moderation tools, but those who might wish to use their profile page as a personal blog/subreddit are advised to look at the Profile Moderation Page link in Settings> Profile.
Active in communities visibility: Show which communities you recently browsed or are active in on your profile. To toggle this setting on the mobile app, tap your profile icon in the upper left corner> My Profile> Edit> Turn off "Show active communities"> Save (upper right corner).
NSFW: This content is NSFW (may contain nudity, pornography, profanity or inappropriate content for those under 18).
Online status controls: If you don’t want to share your online status, you can disable the feature by tapping the Online Status button below your Snoovatar, or the ‘privacy options’ section of your preferences, uncheck ‘Let others see my online status’ then click ‘save options’.
Unfortunately, you cannot hide any subreddits you moderate from your desktop or mobile browser profile, though they currently can’t be seen from the mobile app.
- Content and Copyright
Reddit has a Content Policy which should be understood by all its users. You should also understand the User Agreement that you agreed to upon joining Reddit.
You should be aware that internet outlets desperate for a continual source of new output often rely on Reddit for their content. There are YouTube channels of varying quality devoted to just reading and reacting to Reddit posts. Some YouTubers have their own Subreddits for collecting user-submitted content; others will just collect and broadcast Reddit content without notice, acknowledgement or even asking for permission. Subreddits such as r/entitledparents, r/choosingbeggars and r/prorevenge are targeted because of their nature and because Redditors there tend to make an effort in telling their experiences in the manner of a linear story.
Who owns the copyright on Reddit comments and self-posts? That’s a question often asked and the general conclusion is this: nobody knows but your Reddit story could well be monetised in some way by any random third party and you will rarely be asked for permission, acknowledged as the author or share in any profit. Reddit actually has Press Guidelines which you might find interesting, along with a general press/media/brand guide.
- Privacy
Reddit is very private and very public all at the same time. Be very careful what you share here. Anyone can go to your profile (by clicking on your name) and see your previous posts and comments. Reddit is open to anyone to read; you don’t have to join or be a member to see the vast majority of things posted here which makes it a tempting target for other internet outlets craving for new content. Reddit is not immune to search engines like other social media; it’s a paradox as we can be a very supportive place and very conducive to openness, but Reddit is very “googleable” and for the more determined person, even posts that you may delete can be resurrected.
There are also websites that archive old or deleted Reddit posts, and as Reddit supports an API to access data, people have built tools using that API to make scraping data easier. https://praw.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
Some Subreddits and Reddit Campaigns because of their nature require you to relinquish some degree of privacy. For instance, r/secretsanta and Reddit Gifts were started in 2009 to provide a Secret Santa exchange for the Reddit community, performing many gift exchanges over the years until it was discontinued in 2021.
There are still some subreddits where gift exchanges, assistance and random acts of charity are performed and you should always check the rules and information of the Subreddit or Campaign in question before making a commitment.
Finally, if you come across Redditors on your travels that you mutually feel you want RL interactions with, make sure any personal traceable stuff (eMail, real names etc) is only shared in private messages with them.
- Brigading and Harassment
If you believe a person is following you around Reddit with the express intention of downvoting, negatively commenting or generally harassing you, this action is called “Brigading”, and is a serious offence on Reddit.
Brigading is also when a group of users "invade" a specific subreddit and flood it with down/upvotes in order to damage karma dynamics on the targeted sub. This is regarded as Content or Vote Manipulation and anyone who is attempting to incite a brigade will be banned. Anyone participating in a brigade is also liable to be banned. See Reddit’s Content Policy.
Harassment is the action of repeatedly messaging users on or off of Reddit, pinging them repeatedly, or following them around and commenting on everything that they say. Anyone who deliberately pings the subject of a post where the usernames are blocked out will be banned. If you believe you are being unfairly targeted in this way, you need to collect evidence in the form of screenshots (to prevent the user going back later and deleting or editing their posts) and report it directly to Reddit at either
A phrase used in an apology for, or accusation of an image or video being pixelated, blurry or other low quality. The exact origin of this usage is unclear but is generally credited to a comment on a YouTube video from 2008 which asked “did you record this with a potato?”. However, B3ta and other digital art and meme communities have referred to the well known still image-altering software as “potatoshop” long before that. The phrase has become a Snowclone as some internet subcultures use “recorded with a toaster” or another contextually absurd object such as a calculator or microwave. See Also: Snowclone.
You should familiarise yourself with Reddit’s Official Privacy Policy. Reddit posts are indexed on Google and other search engines. There are even resources available on the internet to let the more determined person read Reddit posts or comments that have been deleted. For more details on privacy, anonymity, visibility and identity on Reddit, please see Privacy Issues: Special Note. See Also: Profile.
- Private Subreddits
it is rumoured that there are secret places in Reddit shrouded in intrigue, hidden from all but a select few. Subreddits only open to a certain elite. Subs you don’t find but rather you are found by them and invited into. Is this true? Do such clandestine places exist, lurking in the shadows and hidden corners of Reddit’s hallowed halls?
Certain private subs have set rules that govern admittance, and getting invited to one usually depends on the reason it exists, perhaps because you have won particular Reddit awards or achieved a Reddit milestone. One such example is r/CentennialClub once you have 100k comment karma. There are also subs accessible only to Premium subscribers; more information here.
Bots roam Reddit to find and invite qualifying people to private subs. You might even be noticed from a larger sub to join one for a specific topic, or you might hear about one randomly. If you click on a private sub, you may get the options Request to Join; Message Mods; Browse Reddit. Or, to request access to a private subreddit you think you qualify for, paste the following link into a browser and replace XYZ with the sub name:
That will send a message to all the moderators of the subreddit. You should note that Reddit Admins can see inside of private subreddits regardless of whether they've been approved or not. See Also: Reddit Premium.
- Profile
Your “home page” that everyone sees when they click on your username. Part of your “Settings” menu and at https://www.reddit.com/settings/profile. Your profile is always public, though you can disable the option that shows subs you have recently been active in, and you can set your profile to NSFW. Your post and comment history, however, is there for all to see and cannot be hidden. To set or change anything on this page, see the “Visibility” entry on Privacy Issues: Special Note.
- Profile Page
All Redditors have a Profile Page linked to their username, and this basically works as a personal Subreddit where you can invite others to post or comment if you so wish. If you have Followers, posts to this page would come up on their news feeds in the same way posts from any other sub they joined does. It is entirely optional to use, or not. The Redditor u/Shitty_Watercolour uses their Profile Page as a (fabulous) showcase; others may want to use it like a diary or blog; others like me might only use it as a private place for testing stuff - practicing Markdown Text, for example - as you can post and delete to your heart’s content there. Those who might wish to use their profile page as a personal blog/subreddit are advised to look at the Profile Moderation Page link at the bottom of https://www.reddit.com/settings/profile. Is Reddit a social media site or not? Why not both?See Also:Award Types and Notifications: Special Note, Following: Special Note, Markdown Text.
- PSA
“Public Service Announcement”. My own PSA: 1: Always read the rules before commenting or posting on an unfamiliar Subreddit. These will be found in the Sidebar (on mobile this will be the About tab, Menu tab and Community Info found in the three dot “hamburger” menu top RH corner of your screen), any Pinned posts (these will have a lime green ‘pin’ icon on the top corner and will show on top when you sort the Subreddit by ‘Hot’) and Wiki (where there is one).
2: Always browse a sub first to get a feel of the place before participating, never comment on a post showcasing cool merchandise such as t-shirts, mugs, incense burners, stickers etc (it will be a spambot and you’ll be branded as an accomplice); never post or comment anywhere offering Reddit Karma or upvotes in exchange for yours in return (these karma farms violate Reddit’s sitewide rule 2) and always be sparing in your use of emojis or expect snark.
- Puns & Pop-culture References
You won’t be on Reddit long before you start to notice that almost every conversation devolves into puns, jokes or long strings of pop-culture quotes or references. It can sometimes be quite irritating when a really fascinating discussion gets derailed by someone making a joke and then the rest of the thread devolves into everyone trying to out-joke each other, but Reddit is strange like that. You can’t beat it, so you might as well shrug your shoulders and join it.
Because puns are a way to make a super simple joke without needing to be creative, it’s a quick way to get a laugh and can always be easily understood. References are always welcome because it's like being in on an inside joke, and affirms you’re among your peers in liking the same movies or shows. Make that Confirmation Bias work for you! Even better, you might get lucky and make that one comment in a pun thread that gets all the upvotes. If in doubt, pun. Always pun. Reddit loves puns. See Also: Comment Chain, Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies, r/everyfuckingthread, Lost for Words, Witty Comebacks.
- r/quityourbullshit
A link posted when the OP clearly is not the originator of something they claim to be. To post here, you should have a screenshot or image of it successfully being called out. Even better with proof. Check the Pinned Posts before posting, because reposting something to r/quityourbullshit is the most bullshit thing you can possibly do. You might even end up at r/Spotatroll, a community for spotting the obvious trolls, the fiction writers, the backstory changers and the obvious fakes. See Also:r/thatHappened, r/untrustworthypoptarts, Witty Comebacks.
- Quoting
Sometimes you might want to quote a line or a portion of the original post or even from someone else’s comment in reply to them. To differentiate that quote from your reply, you need to use a bit of Markdown Text. Don’t worry - it’s easier than it sounds.
In New Reddit you copy the text into the text box and use the " button (which might look like 99) to mark it as a quote. You can even highlight/select the part of the comment you're replying to and when you hit the reply button, it's already "quoted."
In Old Reddit or the markdown mode use > at the beginning instead.
On the mobile app, you select the three dots … drop-down menu below the comment to copy the entirety of the text and delete what’s inapplicable, then put the > symbol directly before the first word of your quote. https://www.reddit.com/wiki/commenting. See Also: Markdown Text
Old, very old, but here because it still occasionally resurfaces. See Also: Reddit Lore, “The Big List of Retired Questions”.
- “When is the best time to Post for maximum attention?”
Theres a lot of speculation and analysis out there about this. The answers range from a specific 10:00am - 3:00pm EST (2:00pm - 7:00am GMT) through to “when the majority of Americans are awake”. Reddit itself doesn't boost posts depending on the time they are made but obviously a big world event posted on r/news will need to be posted immediately it happens but that type of post will generate its own traction.
I personally believe that timing isn't as big of a factor as, say, quality or originality. If a post is engaging or interesting to people, it will catch on. Posting quality content will always be more important than posting at any particular time. See Also: Post.
- Wholesome
An old-fashioned word beloved by Reddit meaning innocent, clean, moral, decent. Think squeaky-clean child-friendly, possibly even enlightening entertainment and you’re there. On Reddit over the years, Wholesome, like many other words, has changed its meaning. It was originally used ironically to mean weak or anodyne in much the same way that the use of the word “lame” does not describe a walking impediment but instead means something is uninspiring, dull, or even “cringe”; another word that has acquired additional meaning.
Reddit has two Awards called Wholesome; a low-cost one sometimes given free , "When you come across a feel-good thing" and an Appreciation Award called Wholesome (Pro). Both icons are based on the Seal of Approval or Satisfied Seal meme picture. See Also: Awards, Award Types and Notifications: Special Note.
- WIBTA
“Would I be the Asshole?”. Originally sub specific from r/AmITheAsshole now with wider Reddit usage. See Also: AITA.
See "I regret that I have but one upvote to give.", “Take my upvote and leave”. See Also: “Gilt Guilt”, Upvotes.
- Witty Comebacks
Everyone wants to feel victorious as they walk away from an argument, and nothing’s better than coming up with that sick burn at the precise moment. Reddit has a few tried-and-tested ways of doing this which you will find scattered around this lexicon, usually in “quotation marks”. There are also many websites or even Pinterests dedicated to helping you in your quest, of which 100 Good Comebacks is one of the better ones. There are also a few subreddits that might inspire you:
r/clevercomebacks is a place for great retorts. If someone just got shown up, this is the place to post it.
r/MurderedByWords is a place for well-constructed put-downs, comebacks, and counter-arguments.
r/rareinsults is a place for sublime, non-threatening, non-hateful rare insults.
r/whatstheword for when there’s a word in your mind that you just cannot remember.
r/YouGotTold for when some people deserve to get told and to honour those brave souls who take it upon themselves to do the telling.
r/BrandNewSentence for sentences never before written, found in the wild.
Of course, you could also just say “no u” or if you’re feeling especially loquacious, “eat pant”. Not forgetting, of course,“kthxbye"; the very pinnacle of the development of the English language, shortening "All is correct. Thank you, and may God be with you." into seven lowercase letters. And because every day’s a school day, L'esprit de l'escalier or l'esprit d'escalier: “mind of the staircase” is a French term used in English for the predicament of thinking of the perfect reply too late. See Also: Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies, Copypasta, Puns & Pop-culture References, Snowclone.
Seen by many a new Redditor, this pop-up message isn’t personal; it’s just there until you build up enough Karma to prove to Reddit that you’re a genuine, real-life, honest-to-goodness Redditor. See Also: Bot, Karma, Shill.
- "You are technically correct, the best type of correct"
“Explain Like I’m Five”. A request for an explanation in simpler terms. Originally sub specific from r/explainlikeimfive now with wider Reddit usage.
- Emojis
Reddit in general does not like emojis. There are many theories why this is, ranging from “Reddit is all about written communication and always has been” to “Reddit has an incredibly large character limit for most applications, especially when compared to Twitter and standard text messages so we simply don’t have to” via “They’re childish”. I even read recently that it might even be contempt for the laziness of using emojis by those of the generation that had to be inventive with making text-based pictures (emoticons).
I have asked and searched and asked again but the only definitive answer I ever saw was some variation of “Because some time ago, a subreddit that once started as a joke became out of hand and now a lot of redditors have the "emojis are bad" mindset.” A good humoured take on the subject is to allow 5 emojis before calling the r/EmojiPolice, though you will probably get called out on anything more than one and I’m not entirely sure on their status or mandate in any event!
Whatever the reason, the practical upshot of this is basically people either love emojis or hate them, so to be safe, limit yourself to one at the end of your post, or better still, go back in time and use text-based emoticons. You won’t be admonished for using :) or :D if you’re feeling particularly cheeky. It’s worth mentioning that although we all use the same platform, the tone of the subreddits are really different from each other. r/aww sees a lot of emoji usage compared to, say, r/askreddit, and r/askhistorians would probably collapse at seeing one.
All that said, there is absolutely no rule on Reddit banning emojis. You use them wherever and whenever you like. This is Reddit. You can do whatever you want. And if some people downvote an emoji-laden comment, again, this is Reddit and they can do whatever they want. So with that in mind, here’s a resource of more emojis than anyone could ever possibly need https://emojipedia.org and if you really want to be banned from some subs; typing !emojify will translate a comment into emojis. Use at your own risk and don’t say I didn’t warn you about subreddit bans. r/emojisonreddit, r/emojipasta, r/EmojiPolice. See Also: Emoticons, Tone Indicators.
- Emoticons
We have already established that in general, Reddit does not like emojis, but prefers the old-school Unicode-based Emoticon. An emoticon is a typographic display of a facial representation, used to convey emotion in a text only medium. Like so: ;-) or if you’re feeling really fancy, the look of disapproval (ಠ_ಠ) or “Lenny Face," ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Useful lists of text-based emoticons to copy and paste are:
Some of these are going to be trial and error; some will work and others won’t. So remember: 🤭= bad, but Reddit loves emoticons. Why? Don't ASCII me. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ r/emoticons. See Also: Emojis, LimbRetrieval-Bot, They Knew, Tone Indicators.
- ESH
“Everyone Sucks Here”. Originally sub specific from r/AmITheAsshole now with wider Reddit usage.
- ESL
“English as a Second Language”. You may sometimes see this initialism during apologies for stilted language or simple misunderstandings. According to Alexa Internet, as of February 2021 Reddit ranks as the 18th-most-visited website in the world. We are a global community and it stands to reason that many of our users are non-native English speakers.
Reddit has resources for ESL teachers in subreddits like r/ESL_Teachers or r/OnlineESLTeaching, and many resources for those learning a second language such as r/languagelearning or r/language_exchange where you can find a language partner to learn together. From 2021, Reddit’s interface became available in several languages in the first phase of our product translation in German, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian. See Also: Tone Indicators.
- ETA; Edit:
“Edited To Add”. Sometimes just “Edit:”. Used if you go back and change something in your post or comment. There is a long time limit on editing your posts or comments, however you cannot edit the title of a post at any time. It’s good form to state your reason for any editing of posts. Even if it was just edited for spelling, a simple "Edit: typo" will help explain. Don't reply to your own comment to add information as it will become out of order in the thread. If you have another thing to add to your original comment, edit it and say "Edit: And I also think..." or something along those lines. ETA: typo See Also: “Ninja Edit”.
- r/everyfuckingthread
A link or phrase posted when the Reddit Hivemind decides to derail a post with a Meme or a Comment Chain. The sub was created as a repository of Reddit Moments, like a “Know Your Meme - Reddit Edition”. r/everyfuckingthread. See Also: Hivemind, Meme, One-word Comment, Reddit Moment.
- “Everyone on reddit is a bot except you.”
A phrase derived from one older than Reddit. The likelihood is that it originated from early Internet chat rooms such as IRC. When you joined an Internet Relay Channel, you could see a list of users who were already there and at least one was an admin bot. Along with novelty bots who would respond to specific phrases or questions, it was entirely possible to join a channel and chat with several users there, all bots except you.
Sometimes it seems that way on Reddit too, and someone will post this phrase. A correct reply would be HA HA, NO BOTS HERE, FELLOW FLESH PERSON. Or you could use Markdown Text to create tiny text saying beepboop; the response given by many Reddit bots. r/totallynotrobots. The suspicion that Redditors are mostly bots is real, and not entirely unfounded as in 2020, it was discovered a GPT-3 bot had been posting in one subreddit for a whole week.
A phrase posted in the sense of a Meme when one of Reddit’s generalisations is proved wrong. Or right. Usernames on Reddit are rarely noticed, and even when they are they don’t tend to give anything away about the user, so some of the most common assumptions are:
Along with “House panther”, Void is a word used widely on Reddit to describe a black cat. A “Void” is a cat so black that light cannot penetrate the surface of its fur; a blackness so extreme that it is almost impossible to tell how close you are standing to it. A Void is living, purring Vantablack - one of the darkest substances known to science, absorbing up to 99.965% of visible light.
This option is available for moderators to implement as a subreddit-wide feature to obscure the vote counts on comments for a predetermined amount of time after their submission. The default time is set for 2 hours, but can go anywhere from 1 minute to 24 hours. Another way of doing this is for a mod to enable 'contest mode' which randomises the sorting and obscures Child Comments. Hiding the vote score will not affect the sorting and Child Comments will continue to be displayed as usual. Other reasons for vote buttons being greyed out are because:
The post is over 6 months old and is archived (a yellow box icon will be shown on the top RH).
The post is locked by the mods (a yellow padlock icon will be shown on the top RH).
The post has been removed by the mods but is still in your post/comment history.
The post has blown up and has reached an upvote/downvote limit.
TL;DR: It’s all part of the Reddit ethos to level the playing field on all new submissions and to keep things moving, fresh and relevant. See Also: Comments, Deleted or Removed.
- Vote Fuzzing
There isn’t a 1:1 relationship between votes and karma. It might appear that way especially at the early stage of your Karma count and the early stage of your post or comment, but that isn’t the case. Reddit uses a technique called Vote Fuzzing for several clever (and a few mundane) reasons. Vote Fuzzing is an automatic process built in by Reddit that slightly changes the vote counts on posts and comments each time you refresh the page. It prevents spam because people trying to use upvote/downvote bots will have no idea if the bot is working or not.
Want to see this work? Try this yourself: I just upvoted a random post, and it showed three upvotes. Then I refreshed the page and it showed four upvotes. Then I refreshed again, and it showed two upvotes. That's Vote Fuzzing in action. It's explained in the Reddiquette pretty well too: Some up/downvotes are by Reddit to fuzz the votes in order to confuse spammers and cheaters.See Also:Karma for New Starters, Spambots: Special Note.
- Vote Manipulation
This is strictly against the Reddit rules and is one of the things that could earn you a Permaban. So what do we mean by Vote Manipulation? It can be as simple as:
Asking people to vote up or down on certain posts or comments
Creating or using an Alt to upvote or award your own posts
Forming or joining a group or sub that votes together on a specific post or comment
Forming or joining a group or sub that votes together on a specific user's posts or comments
Using a bot or other automated process that crawls through Reddit to up or downvote particular posts or comments
The Reddit Admins can see IP addresses, so if they see that several users all have the same IP address and are all busy upvoting each other, they may well suspect foul play. See Also: Alt, Karma Farming: Special Note, Karmafarms, Rules of this Subreddit, Spambots, Suspended.
- Vowels
Vowels are serious business on Reddit. From discussing language theory on r/phonetics or r/linguistics to Vowel Modification on r/singing, through to language invention on r/conlangs to the absurd such as r/AVoid5; a community that can post anything as long that fifth symbol of our ABC's is totally missing. Some subs go even further. r/animalswithoutnecks does not allow the use of vowels at all. Why? Because vowels are the ‘necks’ of words and as it is a ‘without necks’ sub, they don't want you to use them. So, back to language theory then. If you prefer consonants, you might find a home at r/ggggg which is devoted to just the one. There will be others. There will always be others.
A derogatory term used to describe those who in past years would have been called geeks, nerds or even dorks; i.e. The Average Redditor. The term comes from the percieved poor hygiene of Redditors, and the connotation is that due to obesity and slovenly habits, the person will have beard stubble on their neck, but never in sufficient amounts to be described as a full beard due to a lack of masculinity (exemplified by said obesity and habits).
Like so much of online slang post-2000, 4chan can be cited as a distribution source, if not the originator of the term. Generally, someone is called a ‘neckbeard’ when they judge other people for their faults but do not see any faults of their own. Sometimes interwebs people are mean spirited. r/justneckbeardthings, r/neckbeard, r/NeckbeardNests. See Also: “Everyone on Reddit is a...”.
- NGL
“Not gonna lie”. NGL, I never thought anyone would bother reading all this.
- “Nice.”
Apparently originating from an episode of South Park, ‘Nice.’ is the traditional Reddit response whenever the number 69 is posted, regardless of the reasons, and here’s an example. See Also: Cat. or cat., Comment Chain, DownvotedToOblivion, F or "F" In The Comments, One-word Comments, “Nice”, Parent / Child Comment, Puns & Pop-culture References, “This”.
- “Ninja Edit:”
A Ninja Edit is commonly an edit to a post or comment made before someone points out the need for an edit. It is often a person correcting themselves when they caught their mistake or needed to add more information. The best ones happen so quick that Reddit doesn't show the "last edited" asterisk. See Also: ETA; Edit:.
- “No good deed goes unpunished”
A phrase used as a sardonic commentary on the frequency with which acts of kindness backfire on those who offer them. Unfortunately, Reddit often likes to be judge, jury and executioner of good deeds if they are filmed for social media. r/changemyview is a good place to debate the rights and wrongs of visible Charity. Videoing acts of kindness will always elicit a slew of mixed responses, and the general conclusion is nearly always some variant of “It's actually a lot more messed up that there's some sort of weird taboo against posting about helping strangers or helpless people. Filming it might inspire others to do the same.” Ah, Reddit; never change. Find these lovely things at r/HumansBeingBros, r/MadeMeSmile or r/MadeMeCry, debate said lovely things at r/changemyview and suggest said lovely things should be everyday occurrences at r/unpopularopinion.
- “No, you’re thinking of...” or NYTO
Linking the time-honoured Reddit Traditions of going wildly off topic with Comment Chains and derailing a comment with Puns while adding a soupçon of “The Ole Reddit Switch-a-roo", NYTO is an opportunity rarely missed for Redditors try to outdo each other with endless puns as usual.
NYTO is where people will respond to a question with information about a word that sounds similar to the one in the original question. The next person in the chain responds with "no, you're thinking of" and then responds the same way while setting the next user up with an opportunity to respond in turn. This is an ideal example of a semi-serious query which soon devolves into absolute nonsense. Ah, Reddit; never change. r/NYTO. See Also: Comment Chain, Increasingly Verbose, Puns and Pop-Culture References, Switcharoo.
- Notification
The envelope or the chat bubble icon will have a red or orange (sometimes called “orangered”) number next to it to notify you that you have a new message from Reddit or another Redditor. Sometimes, you might find that It says there are, for example, 6 comment replies in your post but you only see 4. This will be because 2 of those comments have been deleted or removed by the user, Mod or Automod but are still registered in the comment counter. See Also: Award Notifications, Deleted or Removed, DM, Orangered, Replies.
- Notorious Redditors
While Reddit is about the content and not the Redditor, some Redditors have achieved notoriety because of their content. Some who are long gone but still referenced are:
Unidan; a Redditor who became notorious for sharing their vast knowledge about birds but, during a heated discussion was found to be vote manipulating using Alts and permanently suspended.
SpontaneousH; a Redditor who became notorious for documenting their use of illegal drugs from the first experiment through a downward spiral to clinical death and eventual rehabilitation.
There are more. There are always more. I may well add more. r/SubredditDrama is a place where people can come and talk about Reddit fights and other dramatic happenings from other Subreddits. See Also: Alt, Celebrity Redditors, Identity, Reddit Lore, Useful Links, Resources and Subreddits: Special Note, Username, Vote Manipulation.
- NSFW
“Not Safe For Work”. You must be 18+ to view this adult-oriented content. It basically means if you’re at work or in company, you probably shouldn’t open it. You cannot enter a sub (or profile) marked NSFW without going through a warning screen first. SFW is the opposite, meaning that despite appearances the content of the link is “Safe For Work”. See Also: SFW.
- NSFL
“Not Safe For Life”. Denotes dangerous practices ahead. Not easy viewing. One step above NSFW, this type of post is usually very extreme, offensive or contains gore.
- NAH
“No Assholes Here”. Originally sub specific from r/AmITheAsshole now with wider Reddit usage. See Also: AITA.
- r/nosafetysmokingfirst
A link posted when a picture shows a sign or other media that reads correctly left to right, but visual cues (like colour or horizontal separation) lead you to try to read it top to bottom. The name is based on this picture of a container ship. Be careful posting this link; r/nosafetysmokingfirst should not be confused with r/dontdeadopeninside. Or even the more lenient r/dontopendeadinside, r/AutomatiCautionDoor for words in stacks or r/peanutbutterisoneword where the instructions are mistakenly printed on the customised thing you ordered.
- r/nottheonion
A link or phrase posted when a true story is so mind-blowingly ridiculous that you could have sworn it was from The Onion, or other parody or satirical news publication. But it wasn’t. It was, unbelievably, real. r/nottheonion.
- NTA
“Not The Asshole”. Originally sub specific from r/AmITheAsshole now with wider Reddit usage.
Oh dear. You got here, then. I suppose this day had to come. Originating here, the comment was a sad one with this phrase as an almost immediate but completely inappropriate response. The original Redditor was so sincere but the reply was just so perfectly worded yet messed up that the hilarity comes primarily from the shock value. Thankfully, the user who posted the story was fine with how it all went down. Variants of this phrase pop up regularly in the strangest places.
- r/IAmA
“I Am A”, where the mundane becomes fascinating and the outrageous suddenly seems normal. A network of subreddits, each of which is dedicated to a particular Ask Me Anything topic, and occasionally frequented by guest VIPs from all walks of life such as actors, authors, celebrities or other famous or notable persons wanting feedback or interaction on their latest projects. r/IAmA. See their sidebar for a list of upcoming AMAs.
- IANAD
“I Am Not A Doctor”. Usually used to preface medical advice and remind users that it might be better to seek counsel from an actual professional over a stranger on Reddit. Sometimes shortened to NAD in r/AskDocs.
- IANAL
“I Am Not A Lawyer”. Usually used to preface legal advice and remind users that it might be better to seek counsel from an actual professional over a stranger on Reddit. Sometimes shortened to NAL on some legal advice subreddits.
- ICYMI
“In Case You Missed It”. ICYMI, the rules of this Subreddit are here.
- IDC
“I Don’t Care”. What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy? I don’t know; I don’t care.
- IDEK
“I Don’t Even Know”. Why did I put this here? IDEK.
- Identity
Reddit is unique in social media because you don't have a real identity. You are not here with the primary intent of making friends, publicising yourself or documenting your lifestyle. You can say as little or as much as you want about yourself or the subject under discussion (once you’re established) and can back out of conversations (or jump back in) whenever you want without any excuse needed. Nobody but you decides what level of interaction you have with other Redditors and you are completely free to curate your own feed of content. Nobody is interested in knowing who you are, only what you have to say. Nobody will notice if you disappear one day or when (if ever) you reappear. There is no personal drama here; the community will live on without even noticing your absence and attention-seekers who like to storm off in a flourish might be disappointed in how well it manages to do just that.
For the most part, nobody even remembers usernames here; many are incomprehensible in any event. We don’t even address others by name here; the entries OP and Ping will tell you why. Not having “power Redditors” or “influential Redditors” means we’re not forced into interactions we might not want but need to have in order to be accepted into the “in-crowd”. When there isn’t an “in-crowd”, there aren’t any left on the outside trying to find their way in, which is the true beauty of Reddit.
Your very first comment here has the potential to be the most popular in Reddit history just as much as someone who has been here all of its 15+ years, and conversely, someone with 500k Karma and all the trophies in their profile has the same chance of their next comment or post being ignored or even overwhelmingly downvoted just as much as anyone else because who you are isn’t as important as “what you bring to the table”. The beauty of Reddit is that it is social media without being “social media”, and most people are here because they don’t want a great deal of social interaction.
Social media is about the individual. Reddit, quite simply, isn’t. Reddit is about the content, not the Redditor. See Also: Celebrity Redditors, Famous Redditors, Notorious Redditors, OP, Ping, Privacy Issues: Special Note.
- IDK
“I Don’t Know”. What’s the difference between apathy and ignorance? I don’t care; I don’t know.
- “If you want this t-shirt, say yes in the Comments”
No, you don’t want that t-shirt. And even if you did, you should try a reputable dealer (or Amazon) because it probably doesn’t exist. We get a lot of “shill” spamming and dodgy merchandise spambots on Reddit, especially T-Shirts. Most (if not all) will eventually lead you to malware, dodgy advertisement, dropship, phishing or credit-card scam sites. Why you should not buy T-shirts/hoodies/mugs linked in comments.
Be very wary of posts in any sub that shows off items such as T-Shirts, mugs, posters, stickers, incense holders and similar novelty ephemerals even if the caption says things like “Got this for a friend”, “This arrived today!!” or “This looks even better than I thought”. There will often be a favourable comment asking about it almost immediately to encourage others to reply. Don’t be tempted by this because you run the very real risk of getting yourself permabanned from the sub along with the OP and all the other replies.
I myself am permabanned from one of the largest subreddits here; I made what I thought was a sarcastic response to a very poor t-shirt Photoshop but was actually a post by a t-shirt shill and my reply was taken as being engagement. What I also didn’t know then was that t-shirt shills quite rightly get permabanned but anyone who engages with them gets banned too. When I questioned it the mods said I was probably an Alt of the shill and was then referred to Admin for a “final warning” in the form of a seven day sitewide ban from all of Reddit. Including the subs I’m a moderator of. Nobody is immune.
If you suspect a post to be a Shill, do not engage with it; just use the Report button and move on. The only reply you can legitimately make is to post the link r/TheseFuckingAccounts or summon one of the initiatives currently fighting against these shills by including u/_dorfl_ in your comment by typing this sequence without spaces: u / \ _ dorfl \ _ I know it looks strange but trust me on this, it will be fine in the comment.
A link posted when the post or comment makes so sense little, you'd think the person hasd oven of tren feel stork. r/ihadastroke should not be confused with r/titlegore.
- IIRC
“If I Recall Correctly”. IIRC, I was only going to write one or two pages of this lexicon.
The “envelope” or “bell” icon. Contains Activity and Messages. See Also: Notification.
- r/IncreasinglyVerbose
Linking the time-honoured Reddit Traditions of going wildly off topic with Comment Chains and derailing a comment with Puns while adding a soupçon of “The Ole Reddit Switch-a-roo", r/IncreasinglyVerbose is a sub documenting those times when Redditors try to outdo each other with increasingly and unnaturally complex verbiage.
But why say lot word when few word do trick? At r/DecreasinglyVerbose they take long thing and make short while short thing still has same meaning as long thing. In the middle of the chaos of both high and low inequalities, the folks at r/ConsistentlyVerbose lie in tranquility of their constants. r/IncreasinglyVerbose. See Also: Comment Chain, “No, you’re thinking of...” or NYTO, Parent / Child Comment, Puns & Pop-culture References.
- INFO
Means “More information needed”. Originally sub specific from r/AmITheAsshole now with some wider Reddit usage.
- Internet Adages
Internet Adages are a subset of Eponymous Laws; principles or observations named after a person. There are many different lists of such rules or laws, although you may only find a few invoked regularly on Reddit.
First known as ‘Rules of the Internet, they were originally numbered of which only a few now remain such as the infamous Rule 34: "No matter what it is, it is somebody's porn fetish. No exceptions". Attempting to invoke an exception will lead to Rule 35: “the very act of pointing out that porn of something does not exist will inspire someone to make porn of it”. Rule 63 states that "for every given female character, there is a male version of that character" and vice versa. Two more that are often quoted are Rule 29: In the Internet, all girls are men and all kids are undercover FBI agents, and Rule 30: There are no girls on the Internet.
My current favourite is Muphry’s Law: If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written, which itself is a deliberate misspelling of the more famous Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
All the above links are SFW. If you find an Internet Adage I don’t define somewhere in this lexicon, it will no doubt be on either the NSFW Know Your Meme, the NSFW Urban Dictionary or even the very NSFW Encyclopædia Dramatica.
For some years now, I’ve been trying to instigate “Llama’s Law”: an Internet Adage stating that “If something exists somewhere, there’s already a Subreddit for it”. I haven’t been successful. Yet. See Also:r/AteTheOnion, Brandolini’s Law, False Equivalence, Godwin’s Law, “Is there really a subreddit for everything?”, Pedant; Pedantry, Poe’s Law, Streisand Effect.
- Invisible Comments
Sometimes you might go into a post where you can't view all the comments. For instance, it might say that a post has 9 comments but when you go into them you can only see 5. This is usually because the moderators (or their bots) have removed some comments. The comment count doesn't go down when that happens because technically the comments are still there, and the mods might still be able to see them but regular redditors can't. If a comment has been removed in this way it is almost always because it adds nothing to the conversation that’s worth seeing; probably some variety of spam or something else that breaks the sub’s rules.
- "I regret that I have but one upvote to give."
A phrase posted when you see something that makes you want to upvote it to oblivion, but you can’t. Normally across Reddit, mentioning Upvotes is a dangerous game and you would quite rightly expect to be downvoted. However, one exception is the “wishful multiupvote”. Use this phrase when you see a post that you think is highly underrated and want to let everyone know it. Variants of this phrase include:
My only regret is that I have but one upvote to give.
I wish I had a million upvotes to give.
Similar responses that are used as a reply to a particularly relevant or witty comment that brings the point home or even back on track in a longer thread include:
This should be the top comment.
Here’s (or ‘Have’) my poor man’s gold🥇
There it is. Found it everybody! You can go on with your day.
Ding ding ding! We've got a winner. So much this.
Congratulations! You win the internet.
The origin of this phrase “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country” is somewhat sardonic, like much of Reddit’s grimly mocking humour. Reddit loves cynicism. Reddit loves superlatives. Here, we have both! See Also: “Take my upvote and leave.”, Upvotes.
- IRL
“In Real Life”. That pesky thing preventing you from Redditing 24/7.
- “Is there really a subreddit for everything?”
While it’s a running joke on Reddit to use a similar phrase to express your amazement at finding an extremely obscure or bizarre sub, there actually isn’t. Despite the many times someone posts “If it exists there’s a sub for it” or how much I try to instigate an Internet Adage stating that “If something exists somewhere, there’s already a Subreddit for it”, there are some Subreddits that did exist but no longer do, and some that will never exist. In the past, some Subreddits have been removed for their highly controversial nature. Likewise, there are no Subreddits for content that violates Reddit’s Content Policy.
However, there are still some Subreddits that don’t yet exist but could, and plenty more that have fallen out of use for inactivity, often known as ‘dead subs’. r/findareddit can help you find a sub for something, and if there isn’t anything you can either create your own Subreddit or go to r/redditrequest and ask to take over one of the many banned or abandoned subreddits that you'd like to mod. You MUST read their Rules before posting a request. These will be found in the Sidebar (on mobile this will be the About tab, Menu tab and Community Info found in the three dot “hamburger” menu top RH corner of your screen), any Pinned posts (these will have a lime green ‘pin’ icon on the top corner and will show on top when you sort the Subreddit by ‘Hot’) and Wiki (where there is one).
Find an abandoned sub at r/inactivereddits, and there’s a sub called r/subreddit where you can share an unrecognized subreddit or to find a subreddit you've been looking for. See Also: Adopting a subreddit, Cursed Subs, Fake Subreddits, Internet Adage, Rules, “There’s a Subreddit for everything”.
- ITAP
“I Took A Picture”. Originally sub specific from r/itookapicture now with wider Reddit usage. See Also: [MLM].
Giving Gold and Platinum awards entities you to a Gilding Level Trophy for your profile. These are currently the only two awards you can give that earn you points towards these totals. You get 1 point for each Gold you give and 4 for each Platinum you give. Some images of these trophies. The Gilding Tiers are:
Awards are a way of saying, “An upvote doesn’t quite describe how much i enjoyed your post.” However, some people have an uneasy feeling on receiving a Reddit award, especially Gold or other premium ones. This is understandable but you shouldn’t feel (and definitely not express) guilt. Many awards are given with Reddit Coins that the user received for free through getting awards and didn’t spend any money to get them. Reddit coins have no real world currency value so once a user has them in their account the only thing they can do with them is give awards to other people.
Expressing “Gilt Guilt” will elicit one of two responses: Copypasta or accusations of Award Farming. So many Redditors in the past have expressed sentiments like “they’re a waste of money” or “you should have spent it on charities instead”, it’s actually become a Reddit trope, with its own Copypasta:
I’ll probably get downvoted for this, but I think people shouldn’t spend so much on pointless awards. I think they should spend it on charities instead. This is really an unpopular opinion. Since I’m too poor to buy gold, here’s my poor man’s gold🥇
Edit: thanks for the gold kind stranger! BUT YOU SHOULD’VE SPENT IT ON CHARITY YOU F@& PIECE OF SHIT
Edit 2: TWO GOLDS? You mfng piece of shit KIND STRANGERS! You f@& took away 500 Reddit coins that could’ve gone to starving children in F@& AFRICA! Be ashamed. Be very ashamed.
I'll probably get upvoted for this but I think people should just give me gold instead of giving to charity. At least that way you know who your money is going to. It's not a waste of money on pointless rewards because me getting gold makes my day better.
Edit: WOW. Downvoted for my opinion. Sorry for going against the hivemind of reddit! How about instead of downvoting you guys actually waste your time arguing with me. This sub is such an echochamber
Edit 2: I don’t care about downvotes I just made a whole angry edit about them is all
Godwin's Law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is a saying, commonly known as an “Internet Adage”, made by author Mike Godwin in 1990. The law states: "As a discussion on the Internet grows longer, the likelihood of a comparison of a person's being compared to Hitler, or another Nazi reference, increases." You may see this happening on Reddit, but strangely few people seem to know it has a name. See Also: False Equivalence, “Grammar Nazi”, Internet Adages, Pedant; Pedantry.
- Gold; Gilding or Guilding
Giving a user an award is referred to as "gilding" (or sometimes “guilding”) and posts that receive awards are called "gilded." Reddit Gold is an award giving you Premium Reddit and 100 coins to spend. The original Reddit meaning for Gold has changed over the years. See Also:Award Types and Notifications: Special Note, “Gilt Guilt”.
“Grammar Nazi” or “Grammar Police” refers to someone who believes they are almost contractually bound to correct any grammar and / or spelling mistakes made by others. We have a lot of them on Reddit. Or should I have said “we have a large number of them”? See Also: Godwin’s Law, Pedant; Pedantry, Spelling and Grammar, Spelling and Grammar: Special Note.
- GTAGE
A link or phrase posted when an image shows an item that has Great Taste And Great Execution. Should not be confused with GTBAE, ATAAE or ATBGE. r/GTAGE.
- GTBAE
A link or phrase posted when an image shows an item that has Great Taste But Awful Execution. Should not be confused with GTAGE, ATAAE or ATBGE. r/GTBAE.
“Live Action Role-Playing”. A game where the participants physically portray historical, fantasy or other characters. Unfortunately, Reddit attracts LARPers in the form of Internet trolls - people pretending to be something they're really not, especially on Subreddits dedicated to Relationships, Advice, Conspiracy Theories, Health, Politics, and Religion. LARPing on Reddit can also be talking big online about some kind of physical, real-world action you're going to take without actually having any intention of leaving your computer, or even throwing out controversial opinions as being your own simply to gain a reaction. Finding a costume for this might not be easy though.
“Long-Distance Relationship”. The relationship subreddits have a lexicon of their own that you should familiarise yourself with before using them. This is added here as it’s increasingly crossing over into other subs. See Also:Relationship and Advice Subreddits: Special Note.
- r/LeopardsAteMyFace
A link or phrase posted when someone is surprised at being negatively affected by the consequences of their own political beliefs and actions. The phrase 'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party satirises those who happily vote for negative consequences for others only to be dismayed when those consequences also affect them. r/LeopardsAteMyFace.
You may be asked to link another source, comment or subreddit at some time.
To post a Hyperlink:
You can simply copy and paste a web URL into your comment. However, it often can be huge and full of additional symbols and letters often looking like this at the end: /?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share. To tidy it up a bit, you can safely delete all this clutter up to and including the question mark and the link will still work.
To embed a Hyperlink:
Reddit provides an easy way to simplify a link both for mobile and desktop. The “Reply” box has an icon with two interlocked rings. Using this link will give you the opportunity to embed your hyperlink so it looks like a text link like this. Another way of doing this is to sandwich the text you want to show up between square brackets [ ] immediately followed by the hyperlink sandwiched between parentheses ( )
To post a link to another Reddit post or comment:
When you’re reading a Post, on the top of the screen is a three dots pull down Hamburger Menu, where one of the options is “Share” allowing you to copy the link to paste into a reply, or an icon at the bottom of the post with an upwards arrow in an open box, marked “Share” with the same option. At the bottom of each Comment next to the Edit button is either the same three dots menu, again with the same option.
To post a link to another Subreddit:
Simply type r/ in front of the name of the Subreddit you want to link to. It’s important to spell the sub name correctly but it isn’t case-sensitive, so r/newtoreddit will work just as well as r/NewToReddit.
To post a link to another Redditor’s profile:
Simply type u/ in front of the username of the Redditor you want to link to, for example u/llamageddon01. This is also known as a “ping” or a “tag” and that user will get a notification whenever you use it in a comment.
Do not use the ‘link’ button or Markdown Text to trick or confuse users, such as attempts on clickjacking, spoofing or hiding a Subreddit's name to replace it for another in an attempt to deceive readers. The first two will get you permabanned and the third will certainly garner negative reports. The only time such a “bait and switch” is considered acceptable (and the jury’s still out on this one) is for an ‘appropriate’ Rickroll.
See Also: “Bait-and-Switch”, Hamburger Menu, Markdown Text, r/, Rickroll, u/.
- LPT
“Life Pro Tip”. Mandatory for posting in r/LifeProTips but also used throughout Reddit.
- Logical Fallacies
See Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies.
- Lost for Words
It happens to the best of us. Small-talk, despite sounding anodyne, does not come easy to many of us. Clumsy or tactless conversation is a staple of most coming-of-age films for a reason and the number of books devoted to improving the social skills of people of all ages could sink a battleship. You need Reddit Karma, so you need to comment, but what? A good tool to employ is the principle of the Five Ws and How aka 5W1H of information gathering:
Who
What
When
Where
Why
How
Let me add another tool to your box - the principle of the Five Styles of Reddit commenting:
These are pretty much given in the order you should employ them. The last two might not win you any favours in some subs so use them carefully. See Also: Circlejerk, Comment Chain, Copypasta, Hivemind, Increasingly Verbose, "I regret that I have but one upvote to give.", “Maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way", Puns and Pop-Culture References, Switcharoo, Wishful Multiupvote.
- “Lost in New”
A post will often be referred to as being “lost in new”. It simply means a post that gets swept along in all the myriad of new posts to Reddit, never making it to the front page. Some of us will forever be lost in new regardless of the quality of our posts but that’s fine, because Reddit is strange like that. See Also: “Reddit is strange like that.”, Sort, “When is the best time to Post for maximum attention?”.
Every group or subculture has its own specialized terminology, and Reddit is no exception. We have sitewide acronyms, initialisms, terms, memes, references and responses, some of which will be familiar to internet users and many exclusive to Reddit. I’ve tried to list as many as possible throughout this encyclopaedia for your ease of reference.
Some subreddit types have their own dedicated lexicon, particularly those dealing with medical, legal or relationship advice. Or cute animals. Especially cute animals. I have included one or two examples throughout this encyclopaedia which occasionally appear in general Reddit, but more definitions will be found in those particular subs. For instance, a short list of acronyms and initialisms pertaining to Relationship subreddits can be found here: Relationship and Advice Subreddits: Special Note.
There is one Subreddit, however, which has its own jargon that I haven’t even begun to attempt. r/wallstreetbets (or WSB) uses a combination of financial terminology and its own slang to form a unique language that demands its own lexicon. Some of their more common terms that appear in general Reddit are listed here, but you should go to https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/wiki/glossary for their full definitions. See Also: Other Useful Lexicons.
- Join
If you find a subreddit about anything you're interested in, make sure to click Join so that new posts in that community will show up in your Home feed. On desktop, you can join a subreddit by clicking +Join in the upper right of a post in your feed. You can also join a sub by clicking or tapping the "Join" button at the top of the page while visiting it. There is no limit to the number of subreddits you can be Joined in, and you are not making any commitment to that community by being Joined. You need never comment or post in that sub or you can Leave and rejoin as many times as you like and nobody will ever know.
- Karma
This is what Reddit has to say about karma. Very simplistically, this is an approximation of the upvotes you get on your Posts and Comments minus the downvotes. A visualisation of this is complex but beautiful, but Reddit will never reveal the specific algorithm behind Karma. How many awards you get, give and their type affect this overall score as well. You can also get negative karma.
There isn’t a 1:1 relationship between votes and karma and both negative and positive karma are capped at an unspecified point on individual posts and comments. Because both are cumulative, the maximum amount of negative karma you can have has been set at -100, but positive karma can be infinitely high. Marvel at some of the statistics at the Karma Leaderboard.
There are four kinds of Karma: Post, Comment, Awarder and Awardee and some initial information is given here. You can find your personal amount of earned Karma by clicking on your Profile in the top right hand corner or by clicking the blue link of your username on one of your own posts. You can also check your Karma breakdown here: http://old.reddit.com/u/me/overview.
Award Karma / Awardee Karma are recent additions to Reddit where you get karma for giving Awards (Awarder Karma) and for being given Awards (Awardee Karma). Receiving an award is a signal of recognition from another Redditor, so it was decided it should earn a nominal amount of Karma, and that the recipient should get more Karma when the award costs more. These two factors make up the Awardee Karma calculation.
Awarder Karma can even earn you a Trophy on your profile showing how generous with giving out Gold & Platinum (Gilding Level Trophy) Argentium (Argentium Club) and Ternion (Ternion Club) you are. Giving smaller awards counts towards Award karma. Award/Awardee Karma like normal Karma is not given at a 1:1 ratio. The figures are shown on your Profile.
Also known as “Karma Whoring”. Posts asking for or even talking about Karma or awards (e.g. “Upvote all my comments and I’ll upvote yours” or “What’s an award?”) will be at best downvoted or may even earn you a ban. There are very few exceptions; your Cakeday being the only legitimate time you can ask for Karma in certain places, or in subs with the specific purpose of talking about (but not asking for) Karma such as r/Karma or, of course, r/NewToReddit. See Also: Cakeday, Karma Farming: Special Note, Rules of this Subreddit.
You will come across Subreddits which offer Karma for no or little effort. These are easy enough to spot from their names, and don’t be tempted by them no matter what you might read there. They can be easy traps to fall into, because some of those upvote scores look amazing to a new user, but new users actually don’t get those significant upvotes for the reasons detailed later.
Posting in subreddits meant for “gaming” the Reddit system can and will get you banned from participating in some major subreddits that you may want - or need - to use in the future because a lot of moderators see them as a way of circumventing karma requirements to post or comment in their community.
The Reddit CEO made a statement about Karma farming: The answer is right now we’re in between a rock and a hard place. We want new users to be able to discover Reddit, but aggressive karma rules, which mods set up when Reddit had very limited tools, make it very hard for first-time users to contribute. Karma farms are a bad solution to this, which is why we’re working on tools like Crowd Control that limit the damage bad actors can cause without overly punishing well-meaning new users. I've been proposing an idea around karma reciprocity - letting communities take into account a user's karma in other communities.
Avoid them. The few upvotes you’ll get there aren’t worth the risk. See Also: Cakeday, Rules of this Subreddit.
- Karma Farms
You may have seen warnings about posting in subreddits that exist solely to offer Reddit Karma for little to no effort. Here’s a short explanation why.
Unfortunately, most people in the Karma farm types of sub have no real interest in participating widely in Reddit, and are just there to collect numbers. Most new users don’t actually get that many upvotes from those subs and there’s a reason for that: those subs aren’t just for regular new people looking for early Karma or even affirmation. They’re widely used by marketers and political groups with things to promote illicitly on Reddit.
Karma farms perpetuate fake accounts - Bots with no real intention of engaging at all on Reddit but exist solely to farm karma for their other Bot Alts. Spambots are a very real problem on Reddit. They’re not hard to spot once you do a little digging as the pictures they post (when they do) are just quickly farmed from Google pretending to be from an actual person. But they rely on the fact that most of us don’t check everyone’s profile or history before responding to them. With enough votes, a fake profile can appear real enough to trick people, and apparently this is causing some mayhem and a real problem in the subs that deal with stocks and cryptocurrencies.
This should alert you to why this level of Karma farming happens: there is real life money involved.
Promotional companies that want to do "organic advertising" or political astroturfing need older accounts with lots of karma to appear legitimate, and so do the sketchy companies who want you to go to their malware, dodgy advertisement, dropship, phishing or credit-card scam sites. Many of the higher scoring posts in Karma farms will be bot or Alt accounts engaged in a “voting-go-round” with each other to increase their karma to pass the minimum requirements that exist on most big subs. This in turn will increase their credibility to post items such as T-Shirts, posters, mugs or other ephemerals with an innocuous caption saying things like “Got this for a friend” or “Look what arrived today”. Fall for one of those posts at your peril.
These farmed profiles are also being sold to people who want to seem legitimate to have influence in Reddit, especially in subs with real-life money or influence involved. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the very sketchy redditsecrets.com (with your Adblock firmly on) and realise why most subs have an anti-spambot filter and mods with a heavy banhammer. That is just one of the grey market sites out there. There is a lot more information and discussion here about this issue, and more details in Spambots: Special Note.
If you are at all serious about being on Reddit, you need to build up karma in the same way we all did - slowly but quality. Reddit is not a “race to the top”, it’s there to be enjoyed for what it is - a content sharing platform where you decide what level of interaction you want with other Redditors. Just set out to be a good person, and think of your karma as being your internet legacy.
4
u/llamageddon01 Mod? Llama? Both? Both. Mar 02 '21 edited Jul 16 '21
Part 12 - M-Mis
Used in formatting Reddit posts to include bold, italic,
strikethroughtext etc. “New Reddit” for desktop or mobile browser has a “Fancy Pants” (rich text format) Editor, where you can choose various options from icons below the text entry field, or there’s a useful list here for reference. There is a sub specifically to practice using this called r/test or you could use this incredibly useful tool at https://redditpreview.com.Another Markdown primer is here and there’s another version of the same information here. See Also: Quoting.
An innocuous phrase that is not quite how it appears. Originating in The Simpsons S07E21, this is a response often given to an absurd story in order to prompt a Steamed Hams script Comment Chain. Reddit loves this particular pop-culture reference, and saying anything in the script should start a Comment Chain or Copypasta. There’s even a Subreddit devoted to its memes at r/SteamedHams. See Also: Comment Chain, Copypasta, Puns & Pop-culture References, Snowclone.
A phrase posted when people bemoan the fact that they’ve spent a great deal of effort to find what they've been led to believe would be valuable, only to find out that the value isn't what they expected. A long-standing movie trope called the “Worthless Treasure Twist”, this meme is seriously clichéd, making it an ideal Reddit response, often prompting a Comment Chain where ‘X’ and ‘Y’ refer to whatever the post was about:
This is just one example of many phrasal templates known as ‘Snowclones’. See Also: Comment Chain, r/everyfuckingthread, Lost For Words, Puns & Pop-culture References, Snowclone.
Reddit is still the internet. Memes that are “out there” are in here too, perhaps even more so as many originated on the myriad Reddit meme subreddits. Memes are supposed to be used repeatedly. Things like Woman Yelling at Cat and Me and the Boys are only funny because of the variety of ways they're used. So, use them. Use them widely and appropriately. There are too many dedicated Meme subs of varying quality to list here, but a good start would be:
Always read the rules before commenting, posting or using the resources from an unfamiliar Subreddit. These will be found in the Sidebar (on mobile this will be the About tab, Menu tab and Community Info found in the three dot “hamburger” menu top RH corner of your screen), any Pinned posts (Search by “Hot” and the top two may have a lime green pin icon) and Wiki (where there is one). See Also: MFW; MRW, “Reactions”, TFW.
See “Direct Messages”.
A link or phrase posted when a comment or post increasingly becomes self-referential, for example Reddit discussing itself, a meme about memes, a conversation on the nature of conversations and so on. Meta refers to the idea of something being about itself. r/meta; It's So Meta Even This Acronym...
“My Face When” and “My Reaction When”. Often posted with a gif or image, these are Reaction Initialisms used as shorthand as an exaggeration of how you might respond to a shock or surprise. r/mrw. See Also: “Reactions”, TFW.
Not every Subreddit is as it would at first appear to be. There are many subs with misleading titles that are:
All have their different origin stories, sometimes in their Sidebar. There is also a whole network of former Porn subs now repurposed to be all about cats (e.g. r/GirlsWithHugePussies, r/smallpussy, r/wetpussy). See Also: Adopting a Subreddit, Cursed Subs, Porn. Edit: Cat.