Can someone explain Reddit to me?

nycindie

Active member
I went to join Reddit a year or so ago, after people here had mentioned it, but for the life of me I never could see how it works. I didn't check it out for too long to figure it out. Is it a community? A Q&A type of site? I visit there and just scratch my head andsay, "huh?" Can any of you tell me what the appeal is and how to get the best use out of Reddit?
 
Reddit is the new usenet.

Use the search engine. If you type in "polyamory" somewhere it will put up the link to the subforums and you can add it to your favorites.

It seems rather poorly organized to me too, and there is a ton of stuff i don't understand. I just go there to read Sexual Accomplishment Sunday, a recurring thread in /r/sex, and to see what kind of wacky threads are "rising" and "hot".
 
Reddit is a website made up of 100% user submitted content. That means pictures, sharing of other websites, forum-style text based discussion, etc. Each section of reddit can be found easily with Google, or using the search function on reddit.com. Each "section" of reddit is known as a "subreddit." Each one is designated by "/r/" and then the name of the subreddit.

For example, there is a subreddit called /r/polyamory and another subreddit called /r/nonmonogamy. There are common sections called /r/funny for pictures of funny things and stuff too. You just have to think of whatever topic you want to discuss and search for a subreddit about it. I guarantee you will find a subreddit on ANY topic that exists that a human has thought of.

The up and down arrows beside each post are there for you to login and "upvote" or "downvote" posts. The posts that have the highest upvotes appear at the top of the list because they are the most popular. Each post (picture or whatever) can hold a discussion under it's own personal "comments" section. So if you want to comment on a funny picture, just click comments and type away. Your comments can be voted up and down as well. The number of upvotes you hold to your account is called "karma." That should explain why the word karma comes up 10000000 times when viewing reddit.

So if you want to get directly to the polyamory subreddit, you can just type reddit.com followed by /r/polyamory, since thats how you designate the sections. Example - http://www.reddit.com/r/polyamory


If you view the subreddit called /r/frontpage You are viewing posts from all subreddit sections that you subscribe to with your account in order by the highest upvotes at the time.

Reddit is most commonly called "the front page of the internet."

Reddit has it's own lingo. For example, yes there are Q and A sections. When someone posts "AMA" they mean "ask me anything." Celebrities and politicians have been known to post AMAs. I know Morgan Freeman and Barack Obama have held AMAs at some point.

Hope that helps.
 
Back
Top