Hi everyone. My name is Rebecca Cameron, and I have a problem. Admitting it is a problem is the first step to recovery so here goes: I am addicted to an internet site and spend hours on it per day. It has taken over my life, driving away friends and family, and if I don’t fix this I will be Forever Alone. My friend, Derpina, told me I needed to reach out for help; she said, “Rebecca, Y U NO get help for your addiction? It’s like you have become a Zombie Fortress… It’s really NSFL.” So now, I will open my heart to complete strangers. Don’t judge me; it’s what the internet told me to do.
Firstly, let me tell you about my addiction. I discovered reddit.com when I was young and innocent, without a care in the world. One of my friends told me I should check it out, and when I did, I was pretty entertained. Reddit is a site on which users post content of their choice – be it pictures, interesting articles, or debate about all sorts of topics. Users can vote posts up or down depending on whether or not they like them, and the posts with the most upvotes get to be on the front page of the site. Users can comment on the links, forming an online community. Users can also browse subreddits – sections of links divided by topic (such as gaming, funny, politics, and thousands more). Users can also gain karma points from commenting on posts – if a user posts good/witty/funny comments, other users can reward them with karma points. Someone with a lot of karma points has a good reputation, whereas those with low karma are either new to the site, don’t spend their lives worrying about points that don’t do anything, or are trolls. A troll is someone who comments with the intent of disrupting normal, on-topic discussions. One of the things I always remind myself is that Reddit is just like the comedy show “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.
Reddit was started in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, both 22-year-old graduates of the University of Virginia. Reddit has experienced amazing growth in the last few years: Four years ago, it experienced 40 million pageviews in a month. In May, Reddit received 1.228 billion pageviews. Reddit has its own jokes and an odd sense of humour (I put five of those jokes in the first paragraph of this article), but that’s not the reason why it fascinates me so much. Many times, there are beautiful art, amazing facts, and fascinating stories populating the front pages. A huge amount of the content on Reddit deals with programming, computers, science fiction, and video games – making it a great place for someone nerdy like me. Also, news reaches Reddit very quickly and lets you see into what regular people have to say. Reddit has a lot of users who have done extraordinary things that will answer questions users ask – these topics are called AMA’s or Ask Me Anything.
However awesome Reddit is, I am wasting my life on this site, and I need to take control. Things have to change. Starting right now, I will not go onto www.reddit.com anymore – and you had better not either, unless you want to waste all your free time…
Who am I kidding? I checked the site at least 5 times while writing this article. Redditors unite!
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