Why Reddit is important (to me)

Once, the subject of Reddit came up with me and my friends. I mentioned how I spend so much time lurking, it was taking away from my productivity.

And one particular friend kinda shrugs and says, “I don’t get how you can spend so much time on Reddit. I mean, I just use it to find out news, maybe once or twice a day.”

I think about this a lot. I mean, recently someone very close to me got frustrated with the way I talk about Reddit so much. Reddit is important to me. And maybe not in the same way as it is for most others.

Reddit isn’t important because of the way it allows you to ask astronauts questions in an AMA, all the way to a space station orbiting Earth. It isn’t important for breaking news about how corrupt our government is. It isn’t important for all the pictures of cats (and boobs), and memes, and rage comics, and marijuana lovers.

It’s important because it gives insight into the way people treat each other.

It’s important because it forced me to learn to deconstruct rhetoric.

It’s important because it provides evidence on just how arbitrary of a world we live in.

It’s important because it equips me to better explain myself in situations where my identity is questioned/threatened.

It’s important because it allows me to see how to be a better ally.

It’s important because it puts my lived experiences in the context of a bigger picture, where I can see through a lens bigger than myself.

It’s important because it reminds me, constantly, how privileged I am.



I’m probably talking out of my ass in here, but it seems like when people go on Reddit, they assume a static identity. They don’t want to learn, to change, or to grow. That takes effort. Reddit attracts people who don’t want to think - but think they do.

I have trouble dismissing people on Reddit. It isn’t like 4chan, or Youtube. You can’t just pretend someone’s a 12 year old and wave them away. You see, them, and read their horrible comments. But they use the exact same language as the real people around me.



It’s a horrible feeling when you’re annoyed at the way Redditors say racist shit, and then hear your friends make the exact same joke. Nothing really beats the dissonance there.



And it’s funny, they way that my friends reacted when you call them out on their language, their attitudes. They take it so personally, like I’m taking the moral high ground by not laughing at their jokes. Look at him; on his Christian high horse, too politically correct to let me say what I want to say.

It resembles the way people hate on SRS, calling them “feminazis” and “crazies”.

“It’s just a joke,” they say.

“It’s just a word,” they say.

“It’s fine if you have an opinion, but why can’t you just keep your mouth shut?” they… oh wait, that was my roommate.

Redditors love to think of themselves as easygoing, human-loving humanists who just “want to do good”, or “make the most of their short lives on this pale blue dot”, or whatever Carl Sagan rhetoric that motivates them. But I believe this is a lie of convenience, and it is a lie that every single one of us uses to convince ourselves we are living a worthwhile life. And maybe that’s okay.

But I want to make sure. I want to twist myself out of complacency and make excuses for my behavior. I want to see where I’m messed up, where my ideas are problematic. And if that’s at risk of constantly changing my definitions of “good” and “bad” (and realizing that they don’t exist at all), then so be it.

Recently, I guess I’ve started to believe that I’m here for a reason. That I should make the most of my position and privilege, and do something with it. I guess that means grappling with this shit, where others can’t. It means facing down these ideas and understanding them. And still standing where I stand. It means gritting my teeth through difficult conversations, being split in half with a double consciousness, it means making something of the dissonance.