I would love, I guess, to pretend that I spend literally no time on the Reddit dot com site and instead spend my time like reading literary criticism or searching through vegan recipe sites or something worthwhile. But I probably look at reddit for, at most, like twenty to thirty minutes per day, the majority of which, coincidentally, come while I am shitting.

For the life of me, I wish I could remember the name of the video where a guy posts the same painting twice on Reddit, crediting himself once and crediting his uncle once, and with the painting credited to his uncle vastly outperforming the one credited to himself.

I’d link to it but I’ve completely forgotten where it came from, and I’m hoping that it was from a normal youtube person and not one of the guys whose job is to laugh at kids all the time. If it’s from a video from like the H3 guy or one of them other big youtube guys, then please disregard this paragraph and pretend I fabricated that memory and I’ve never seen a youtube guy with more than like 120K subscribers

Oh, fuck, it was this guy. If you all don’t respect me anymore then that’s totally fine. I wouldn’t respect a guy who watched a video of a dude yelling about instagram models and took anything away from it. (I doubt that most of you respect me to begin with, but that’s beside the point)

Anyway Reddit posts some recommended boards at the beginning of each day and you’re forced to consider them when you read the site during your shits. Over the past two days, I’ve been forced to consider two subreddits – “WhyWereTheyFilming” and “untrustworthypoptarts” Both of these boards are focused upon calling out or shaming those who set things – images or videos – up and then post them on Reddit.

There’s an implication that anything posted on Reddit is serendipitous, or, at the least, not one’s original creation. Those who post on “mildlyinteresting”, one of Reddit’s most popular boards, expect to see images of things found, not so much things created. I understand, it’s a site built on aggregation, not on creation. But there’s a dissonance in this disdain, Reddit wants product but they don’t want it from those who produce.

Part of this is just frustration from one of those producers, and I’m well aware of the stereotype that bloggers, video makers, podcasters who share their works on forums based around those functions don’t actually read, watch, or listen to the others on those forums. Particularly RetroTube, where I’ve posted in the past and where many-a video goes up with zero up or downvotes, zero comments, and probably as many viewers.

It’s a grind.

I understand it, though. When there’s an unspoken agreement that something found is better than something made, intentionally trying to fake serendipity – especially for the gain of something as valueless as Reddit Karma – is frustrating. It’s not as frustrating to me as phrases like “Cake Day” or “ELI5” but it’s still frustrating. About seven years ago, I would’ve sworn never to use Reddit because of the many incredibly unsavory boards, the men’s rights, the red pills, etc, but once i found out that there’s about one (1) community where MLS fans live, I joined, and I’ve had some good experiences and learned some stuff along the way.

And any site that has allowed one of my friends the privilege of getting smited by Jerry Seinfeld is ultimately a net gain.