Reddit is one of the few still-used modern day message boards. There’s a subreddit for everything—if you haven’t found what you’re looking for, you probably aren’t looking hard enough. The website layout is bare bones-—no shiny new layout that changes every six months (although Reddit did change its front page in 2017 for the first time), no frequent upgrades or “must have” features pushed on users. The interface hearkens to a simpler time on the internet, when the fonts were a little ugly and the users didn’t care.
Though it started as a website that people didn’t really talk about publicly or in mixed company, Reddit now boasts over 1.66 billion users, and approximately 1.2 million subreddits (like I said, a subreddit for everything). As with most sites that thrive on social interaction, Reddit is addictive and time-consuming. In just a few clicks, scrolls, and refreshes, you can find yourself logging hours on the site. The site makes it possible to keep your finger on the pulse of both mind-numbing and engaging topics all at once, and certain threads to reveal the best or the worst in people.
While many social media sites battle it out to establish their cultural importance, Reddit doesn’t need to; The numbers speak for themselves. From celebrity threads, where people can ask anything (AMA’s), to threads where people post new information they’ve learned that day (Today I Learned, or TIL), it’s easy to see why its users seem to be addicted to the site. Redditors have used the platform to predict TV show plot twists, go rogue and leak entire TV show seasons, and dive deep into conspiracy theories—including a super weird one about Mattress Firm.
Here, we’ve curated a list of some of Reddit’s most iconic threads, showing why it deserves the tagline it boasts: "The front page of the internet."
This guy pissed off his girlfriend’s family when, upon meeting them for the first time, he pretended to not know what a potato was. What he thought would start off as a funny, ice-breaking bit turned into an explosive situation—don’t tell us you’re not even a little bit intrigued.
A teacher weighs in on the “Who’s the dumbest person you’ve ever met?” thread, and his answer is so simultaneously hilarious and unbelievable that you’ll want to meet the person he mentions. Other redditors weigh in with their answers, but nothing tops the description of “Kevin.”
A guy re-lives his own personal horror story when posting about the most embarrassing thing he did to get his crush’s attention. It takes place in the ‘90s at summer camp, so you know the ending has to be truly horrifying.
This thread is full of people telling their own paranormal stories, which range from a little creepy to downright terrifying. A couple of these anecdotes have hilarious endings that aren’t scary at all, but you might want to keep a light on while you read the others.
Nerds come out of the woodwork to make sure Bill Nye gets roasted in his own AMA thread.
Jerry Seinfeld does an AMA and gives a lot of insight into Seinfeld’s creation, including a scrapped episode where Jerry buys a gun—topical, no?
A man tells a story of saving a woman from drowning, only for her to sue him for it afterward. Other posters join in sharing stories of when they saved people’s lives only to be sued or reprimanded later.
This guy tells us what it was like to have Xzibit pimp his ride, and what the MTV show was like behind the scenes.
A storyboard artist from Nickelodeon takes drawing requests and delivers, with sketches ranging from Freddie Mercury to CatDog pooping. The thread was so successful, he even did another one.
This wouldn’t be a best of Reddit thread without a collection of horrifying gems from r/relationships. Some of the posts on the r/relationship subreddit are completely conceivable, common issues that couples tend to go through. This thread is absolutely not that.
People’s usernames come in handy for this thread, where the users enact the actions they named themselves after.
Barack Obama’s charismatic AMA is lauded by Reddit users far and wide for being one of the most popular, communicative, and humble Ask Me Anything threads to date. The thread was so popular that the traffic briefly shut down the site the day of.
In this TIFU (Today I Fucked Up) post, a guy embarrasses his wife and botches a first meeting with her boss, all because of how he disposes of a steak.
This user’s Reddit suddenly translates everything to Spanish, and he makes a post asking for help. The result? Everyone responds in Spanish.
In a thread of unsettling events, users explain “glitches in the matrix,” where for a split second, their perception of reality was altered.
Here, redditors recall the funniest stories they’ve read on the site, including one about a tiny monkey beating up a Rottweiler.
In this jaw-dropping thread, Reddit users adopt throwaway accounts to reveal their darkest secrets that could ruin their lives if they came to light.
Have you ever picked up a hitchhiker? Here, Redditors share detailed accounts of times they picked up strangers on the side of the road.
Back when Snoop Dogg went by Snoop Lion, he did an incredible AMA where he revealed what celebrities have smoked him out, and indulged a redditor who asked, “Why do you carry an umbrella?”
In a notoriously unfortunate AMA, Woody Harrelson doesn’t seem to understand the concept, uses the opportunity to plug his movie Rampart, and Redditors are having none of it.
#TodayIFuckedUp TIFU after applying for over 30 jobs. http://t.co/SNFbsFZY32 #OhShit
— The Best of Reddit (@TheDailyReddit) April 17, 2014
We all know searching for jobs can be hard. But the more resumes you send out, the higher your chances of landing a gig is, right? Sorta. As long as you don't make the same mistake that Reddit user Sproutedonthenumber9x3 made. His post, submitted to the Reddit thread, r/TIFU (today I fucked up), showcased one of the main things you shouldn't do when applying to jobs (especially 30 of them) online, by way of the only employer that got back to him. The profile picture of the service he used to send the resume featured an Ewok with the words, "Prepare your anus."
Anonymity on the Internet allows for conversations that likely wouldn't have happened otherwise. One of these examples is of a r/AskReddit post that asked escorts what their first experience was like while on the job. Some of the responses were surprisingly chill, while others talk about awkward situations and overcoming nerves.
The subreddit, r/TheButton, dropped on April Fool's day, and is pretty simple in its concept, but is extremely cunning in its ability drive Reddit users crazy. So, if you visit the subreddit, this is what you'll see:
There's a button on the left side (hence, "The Button"), and a 60-second counter on the right side and center. Every redditor who signed up before April 1, 2015, can press the button, which restarts the counter. If it reaches zero, it's all over. What happens then? No one knows, except whoever put this together. (I captured the GIF above, which just happened to reach "24 seconds," the lowest I've seen yet. If you have the option to press the button, you can only do it once. What makes it more interesting is that redditors who press the button at different times get different kinds of flair (badges that appear next to their username). Users who press the button just after the clock resets get purple or blue flair, while those who wait for the counter to tick away get orange, yellow, or red flair. You can check out the ranking here. Most recently, a technical glitch did cause the button to reach zero faster, with nothing happening when it did. So far, the glitch has been acknowledged and "The Button" is still going strong.
While talking about your nastiest sexual encounters is bound to be a juicy thread, the user who posted the thread, finebushlane, set the bar pretty high with his own descriptive story of going down on a girl who was less than clean.
But, that bar was surpassed by a legendary post known as the "Jolly Rancher Story."
Reddit user The_Quiet_Earth wanted to know if they could destroy the entire Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus if they traveled back in time with a modern U.S. Marine infantry battalion. Of course, a question like that deserves a good answer, and Prufrock451 had one. Or, dozens of them, actually. It what's now become known as "Rome Sweet Rome," James Erwin, the man behind Prufrock451, wrote an epic account of what such an encounter might look like if it happened. His story spanned more than 3,500 words within a week, and, sometime later, the post got enough attention that Warner Bros. came calling and cut Erwin a movie deal. Not everything worked out though, and Erwin was booted from the project and his draft was rewritten by a dude who worked on Apollo 18. Not much has been heard since that happened in 2013.
At some point, we're going to have an embarrassing moment with our parents. It comes with growing up (and a lot of it will happen when you hit puberty, unfortunately). If you're lucky, your parents might never speak of it, and no one will ever know about it, until you post it on the Internet.
One of the most popular posts in Reddit history was never meant to be read. Posted by Reddit user qgyh2, it simply said, "test post please ignore." Of course, no one ignored it.
It was upvoted more than 21,000 times. Some things are better left unexplained.
The Civilization series of video games lets you build an empire, starting in the year 4000 BC, and lets you see how long you can make that empire last (it can stretch far into the future). Reddit user Lycerius had been playing the same game of Civilization II for 10 years (impressive!) just to see how far he could go, and he made it to the year 3991 AD.
The details of what has happened to his world within the game are interesting, but he has a problem: only his empire, and two others, are still around, and they're locked in perpetual war for 2,000 gaming years, with no end in sight. Reddit users came through to give him some tips, while others just wanted to give him props for his gaming commitment.
It's been upvoted more than 12,000 times.
A powerful Reddit thread revealed some of the saddening, and eye-opening, experiences people have gone through while living in poverty in America.
O.K., so we had our laughs, now it's time to get motivational. Just two months ago, a Reddit user by the name mylasttie submitted a heartbreaking post that announced that he was diagnosed with cancer, and was picking out the tie he would wear at his funeral. He was only 24 years old. He wanted to give out some last bit of advice to Reddit that reminds us to put things into perspective, and not to waste the precious life we have left.
Now, enough Internet for today. Go out and do something.
