Navigating Reddit

Starting this project, I was immediately overwhelmed by Reddit. I did not where to begin, where to look, and was honestly drawing a blank as to what possibly interested me. I scrolled through the “controversial” page and I was truly surprised. Half the topics on the “controversial” page were not remotely controversial. There were jokes, pictures, memes, and even random facts about people. I was confused because I wanted to respond to something controversial to stir the pot in a way. I think the most interesting part of Reddit is that you can truly say whatever you want and about whatever you want. I scrolled to another page of what was “hot” on Reddit. I quickly found an article with the title “Arguing about gender differences on Reddit”. I thought this would be a good choice too but soon learned it was just a place for people to rant about inequalities in the work place and if they were existent or not. After leaving that page I realized that that was what Reddit was, ranting. Reddit gives people the opportunity to voice their opinion; on whatever topic they wanted, no matter how outlandish. So I decided to take part and state my opinion on Reddit.

I decided that I wanted to get people talking, or ranting about my post so I chose a topic that I knew I would find something to rant about. I entered in the subreddit of Boston and quickly found an abundance of articles regarding where to eat, go out, shop, live, and park. First I decided to check out what people were saying about the Bruins. The Bruins recently traded Johnny Boychuk, one of my favorite players, so obviously I think it was a mistake and thought I could respond to this. I started responding to certain articles then starting reading articles on Boston in general. I grew up in Boston my whole life so I figured it would be easy for me to respond to certain questions people had about anything around the area. I came across an article of someone complaining about the problems regarding parking in my hometown. I found the perfect article to respond to. I wanted to instigate a bit so instead of addressing the new restrictions set in place about parking I decided to criticize the way people park. The streets in South Boston are tight and majority of the people who come to live here from suburbs cannot parallel park. I know it’s harder than other types of parking but it isn’t that difficult. Since these people were criticizing the city councilor and his new restrictions I decided to criticize them and stir the pot. Seems a little childish but that’s what everyone on Reddit seems to be doing. Its an outlet for people to take out their frustrations, carry out arguments, bring up issues, whether their national or neighborhood related, and wait for other people to respond to their thoughts. Reddit is interesting, confusing, and different than any other blog forum I’ve seen. Being able to post whatever you want and say whatever you want is what I think makes it so appealing to people.