Culture
Natasha Jokic
- Users of Reddit frequently ask questions or seek advice on the platform. Whole subreddits exist devoted to the practice.
- Some posts have gained viral attention, and users often attest that Reddit advice helped them in their situation.
- Because Reddit always anonymity, users often post more freely than on other platforms like Facebook, but this comes at the price of trustworthiness of information around sensitive topics such as medical or legal advice.
- This story is part of the series: A beginner's guide to the internet.
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Have a problem that you want to pose to an anonymous internet audience? A specific question that no one in your life can help with? Or do you just want to read other people's drama? Then Reddit's ask and advice communities may be the place for you.
There are over 1.8 million subreddits, many of which allow users to ask questions and offer advice. As per the rest of Reddit, comments and posts are sorted through an upvote and downvote points system. The ask and advice communities have often gained notoriety and made headlines for their seemingly melodramatic content, but they can also be a place where real users get help for a whole host of different issues. Whether it's getting dating tips or identifying a mysterious object, Reddit is here to help.
What are the Advice Subreddits?
For a range of advice requests, the most general advice subreddit is r/Advice. The subreddit "is a place where you can ask for advice on any subject" and currently has over 365,000 members. As a result, the posts can be eclectic — from "Is it okay for men to wear sports bras?" to "What can I do against the guy who constantly downvotes my posts and comments?" Posts gravitate towards relationships, but any issue is hypothetically allowed.
However, many more subreddits exist for specific advice. One of the most notable is r/relationships, one of the many designated spaces for discussing interpersonal relationships. Many of the popular posts deal with serious issues, such as suicide and grief, but plenty of posts still discuss the everyday.
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The phrase, "hit the gym, lawyer up, delete Facebook," has become a popular phrase which some people use to mock the perceived advice often given in relationship subreddits, however, update posts frequently thank users for their feedback.
Some more specific advice subreddits include:
- r/legaladvice: a place where users ask legal questions.
- r/JUSTNOMIL: a subreddit for users to share stories and ask for advice about their mother-in-laws.
- r/askwomenadvice: barring legal and medical advice, a space to ask women for advice.
What are Ask Subreddits?
Often overlapping with the advice subreddits, ask subreddits also allow users to ask questions. With 26 million members, r/AskReddit is a hugely popular destination —but only for open-ended questions. In any given week, users can exchange everything from pro-tips for the opposite sex to stories about crime-scene clean-ups.
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For specific requests, many more subreddits exist:
- r/AmItheAsshole: users share a story and then ask for a verdict of NTA (not the asshole), YTA (you're the asshole), NAH (no assholes here), or ESH (everyone sucks here).
- r/IsItBullshit: a place for fact-checking potentially misleading claims.
- r/explainlikeimfive: users ask for a complex issue to be simplified as if explaining it to a child.
Some posts are legendary.
Reddit's ask and advice communities provide a varied range of content that is easy to spend hours delving into, but here are just a few posts to get started:
- "What tasty food would be distusting if eaten over rice?" Despite the typo in the title, one of the most entertaining r/AskReddit posts came when a user asked what food would taste terrible paired with rice. They then proceeded to make many of the suggested recipes, providing a rating for each one: jelly beans: 8/10. Jelly beans with rice: 4/10. Little too weird on the textures and not the best flavors either."
- "Me 18m with my Dad 46m, I'm afraid he's going to do something to the man who killed my mother." A young user posted in r/relationships, afraid of what his father would do after his mother was killed in a drunk driving accident. In an update post, he credits Reddit's advice for helping him convince his father to go to therapy.
- "[MA] Post-it notes left in apartment." A series of posts that got turned into a podcast began when a user kept finding mysterious post-it notes in their apartment. Initially concerned about a break-in or a stalking landlord, the user turned to r/legaladvice. However, one commenter suggested that the problem might be a carbon monoxide leak —which turned out to be exactly right.
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Things to keep in mind.
There are a few things to keep in mind when engaging with ask and advice subreddits:
- Adhere to the subreddit rules. Posts can easily be removed for not adhering to guidelines. These can vary considerably by subreddit: r/relationships insists users include age and gender in their post titles and a TL;DR (too long, didn't read) summary at the end, whereas r/relationship_advice does not.
- Be kind. Contrary to popular belief, many subreddits do not tolerate harmful content. There is a reason why the first rule of r/advice is "be nice."
- Be specific. While identifying information can be omitted, the best posts are rarely generalized.
- Be open to taking advice. It may seem obvious, but users who are perceived to be combative to suggestions are typically downvoted in the comment section.
The Risks of Reddit.
One of Reddit's biggest draws is also a huge drawback. The anonymity the platform allows users means that people might feel freer to be more forthcoming, but also doesn't guarantee that who you're talking to knows what they're talking about. This can lead to huge risks in subreddits like r/STDs, where more than half of posts ask users for a diagnosis. There's the potential for misinformation to proliferate, as there's often few ways to check whether or not the person is a licensed medical professional or just a teenager with WebMD.
Plus, some of the posts asking for advice might be entirely fabricated.
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In 2016, Reddit announced that text-only posts would be eligible for karma (Reddit's user points system) —which incentivized more outlandish content. Take one user who pretended that her mother-in-law had accused her of killing her unborn children through drug use and held a funeral for some creepy baby dolls. The moderators found that the posts were completely fake, deleted the posts and banned the user. However, not all fake posts are spotted so easily.
Even if a post is sincere, there's still a chance that it won't just be kept to the confines of a few people on the subreddit of choice. Reddit is a huge website where advice and ask posts often reach the front page, so it's not uncommon to see phrases like "they ended up finding this post" on updates.
Outside of Reddit, the communities frequently attract the attention of the media and Twitter.There are even entire accounts dedicated to screenshotting posts — such as @redditships, which tweets relationship advice subreddit content to over 256,000 followers. Of course, the chances of a post going viral are slim —but still there.
All in all, Reddit can still be a great place to ask burning questions, seek advice or gain insight into people's lives all over the world — with some caution.
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