Reddit, often referred to as “the home page of the Internet”, is a unique social networking site where users can stay updated on the latest news, information, and topics of their choice. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, Reddit is a little more complicated for new users.
This article will help you become more familiar with Reddit while also giving you useful information about different aspects of the site.
What is Reddit?
Reddit is the main page of the Internet, where everything comes to light. That funny video doing the rounds on Twitter? It was probably on Reddit 48 hours ago.
That’s probably not a very useful description, but it helps explain some of the appeal. It is one of the largest communities on the Internet, but it is not like a normal social media site because the content (links and text posts) is constantly voted on by the community. The good comes to the front page; bad things are ignored.
The site is pided into different thematic forums, called “subreddits.” Each one has a different interest or idea as its theme. Reddit itself realizes how complex the site may seem at first glance and has a subreddit dedicated to answering your questions. Is called r/NoStupidQuestions,
The home page is a summary of the most popular content from each of the subreddits where the site automatically enables it. Click on each one and you’ll see plenty more things that didn’t make it to the big leagues. Getting to the homepage and the resulting traffic generated is known to end up with poorly prepared websites struggling under pressure.
Casually enjoying Reddit
With this in mind, it is very possible to enjoy Reddit passively. If you’re not logged in or haven’t changed your settings, visiting Reddit.com will present you with the most popular and upvoted content on the site. This tends to be limited to certain popular subreddits, which everyone is automatically subscribed to. Includes topics like /r/movies, /r/ShowerThoughts, /r/Jokes, etc.
Creating an account
To fully customize and enjoy the Reddit experience, you must create an account to browse Reddit. This allows you to subscribe (or unsubscribe) to any subreddit on the website, as well as upvote and downvote posts, message other users, etc. Signing up for an account is very easy, just follow these steps:
- Click “Register” in the upper right corner of the page.
- Choose to sign in with your Google, Facebook, or email credentials.
- Choose a username (this is different from your login credentials and will be how other users will see your profile name) and a password.
And that’s basically it! You now have an account and can use all the features that reddit has to offer. Continue reading to learn more about those features.
Choose your subreddits
Reddit will automatically subscribe you to some subreddits, but automatic subscriptions only apply to the most popular subreddits, but that’s just a sample of what happens. At the time of writing, there are 1,209,754 subreddits, according to RedditMetrics. And it’s increasing all the time.
Not all of them will be of interest, of course, but many will be. Basically, if you can think of a topic, there will be a subreddit for it, no matter how obscure it is. Finding them is the complicated part. Searching for your interests is one way to do it, using the handy search bar at the top of the site, but it’s actually not a bad idea to just scroll back through the most popular subredditsby pressing the subscribe button on any that seems attractive to you; Unsubscribing is just as easy if you discover you don’t like it.
Here are a couple of examples of subreddits that might be interesting no matter what your interests are: /r/nottheonion curates news that sounds crazy and is actually true. /r/dataisbeautiful is packed with statistics, graphs, and other wonders. /r/explainlikeimfive takes complex ideas and explains them in a way that a five year old could understand (in theory).
Reddit: up and down vote
Next to each item there is an up arrow and a down arrow. If an article gets enough upvotes (usually around thousands), an article will reach the front page, even if it is not on the default subscription list. Naturally, however, pieces have a much better chance of making it to the front page if they are on the default list, since there are more people to vote for them.
Every no vote subtracts one yes vote, so it’s a good old-fashioned popularity contest. The same goes for comments on articles. Upvoted comments will be displayed immediately after the article and ignored comments will be relegated to the bottom.
Some types of content on Reddit are designed specifically for comments, rather than as an external link. ‘Ask Me Anything’ (AMAs) are opportunities for the community to ask questions to celebrities and notable figures. Some of them mark the news of the day, while others go horriblybut in theory, you have the option to ask whatever you want: “would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?” is a popular question Even Barack Obama has responded.
Since most subreddits are themed around certain topics, such as /r/elderscrolls or /r/IASIP, these subreddits will almost exclusively be threads discussing opinions, thoughts, and ideas, with no links to external content.
Ending
Reddit is one of the most popular sites on the Internet and as such has a lot to offer. This article is intended to serve as a starting point for those who are completely new to Reddit. Obviously, the platform has much more to offer than what is mentioned in this introductory blurb. Do you have any tips, tricks, or questions related to how to get started with Reddit? Do you have any suggestions for new users who want to explore the site? Share it in the comments section below!
Images: Eva Blue, Eva Blue, Torley used under Creative Commons
