The Complete Beginner's Guide to Reddit

48 Pages·2014·1.18 MB·English

by  Matthew Fuller

The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Reddit
By: Matthew Fuller
This book is a completely beginner-focused guide to
setting up and maintaining a Reddit account for the purposes of staying up-to-
date with current events, commenting on articles, or discovering interesting
stories online. It is provided as-is for educational purposes only and the author
does not guarantee that it is free from errors or that its instructions will become
obsolete in the future. Reddit and all references to the site herein are
trademarked by Conde Nast.
1
Introduction
If you’ve been using the Internet for more than a few days, perhaps you’re
looking for a way to find new and interesting stories or learn more about a
certain topic. Luckily, you’ve come to the right place! In this book, I am going to
teach you about a site called Reddit.

If there is one place on the Internet that encompasses the broadest range of topic
diversity, user interaction, and occasional controversy, it is Reddit. Reddit is a
form of Internet bulletin board, a place where users can post links to news
stories, images, video, or just plain text about almost any topic imaginable.
These posts are then voted on by its users and the highest-voted posts reach the
top of the page while the negatively-voted posts slowly sink out of sight.

Reddit was started in 2005 by two students at the University of Virginia: Alexis
Ohanian and Steve Huffman. In 2006, the website was acquired by Condé Nast
Publications, although the company has interfered very little in the site’s
operation. The site has steadily gained users, and its biggest acquisition of new
accounts came between 2009 and 2010 when another similar site, Digg, changed
a number of its policies, causing a mass exodus of users to Reddit.

At the time of this book’s publication, Reddit has almost 3 million active
accounts. In 2013, there were over 56 billion page views on the website. Actors,
comedians, TV personalities, and even the President of the United States have
accounts on the site or have posted on it. Needless to say, Reddit is extremely
popular and influences a wide sector of the Internet.

In the next chapters, I will be walking through every step of using Reddit. I will
cover getting familiarized with the site, setting up an account, securing your
privacy, posting, interacting with users, utilizing the many resources available,
and customizing your experience. By the end of this book, I am hopeful that you
will be using Reddit to its full potential and enhancing your browsing
experience.
2
The Reddit Experience
Demographics
Before I begin walking through each of Reddit’s features and the process of
getting started on the site, I want to give you a bit more background that will
hopefully be helpful in understanding the site and its users. If you’re itching to
just get started, skip ahead to Chapter 3, but I think this chapter should be an
interesting read if you have the time.

The first thing you should understand about Reddit is its demographic. It is very
heavily populated by young-adult males with a liberal political ideology. The
most popular age range on the site is 18 - 29 and the comments and topics
generally reflect this. The site’s users as a whole are intensely political, value
fairness and free speech, and are also quite philanthropic, donating to a wide
variety of causes. If the age or political statistics make you hesitant to visit, don’t
worry, there are a seemingly unlimited number of sub communities that differ
from the sum of the whole.

Reddit has a very nerdy and technology-slanted presence as well. Due to the fact
that a number of its users joined when the site was focused heavily on these
topics, the culture remains strong. Technology-centric posts often get voted to
the top more easily than other posts and many of the site’s users have a high
degree of technological literacy. Users value the openness of the Internet and any
companies that work against that notion are shamed.

Due to the younger demographic of many of Reddit’s users, some of its content
can seem immature, crude, or inappropriate. There is very little censorship on
the site and pictures containing nudity or grotesque injuries are posted regularly
(although they can be easily hidden). Despite this, the user has the ultimate
control over everything he or she sees, and I’ll be walking through the steps to
customize the experience to a personal liking.
While the generalizations above apply to the average of Reddit’s users, there is
no shortage of demographics that do not fit the mold. While the political
ideology is predominantly liberal, there are countless communities for
conservatives, libertarians, anarchists, socialists, etc. Despite the
overrepresentation of male users, female users have a wide variety of
communities to join, including ones for women’s rights, motherhood, parenting,
etc. This pattern repeats, resulting in a site that can cater to almost any political
ideology, age, gender, and hobby.
Common Terms
In this section, I will define some common words and phrases that I’ll be using
in the book or that are popular on Reddit. The definitions will be brief, but don’t
worry, I’ll be getting into much more detail later.

Subreddit - A subreddit is a community within Reddit that covers a particular
topic. For example, the “politics” subreddit centers on political topics, news
stories, images, and videos. Subreddits are denoted with a r after the reddit.com
address, such as reddit.comrpolitics.

Upvote - A positive vote on a submission or comment. It is displayed as an
orange up arrow.

Downvote - A negative vote on a submission or comment. It is displayed as a
blue down arrow.

AMA - Ask Me Anything. Although this is an entire subreddit by itself, the term
is used across the site to indicate to other users that they can ask questions of the
original poster. For example: I work at Google, AMA.

OP - Original Poster. Refers to the user who originally submitted the content or
made the first comment.

Thread - The collection of comments on a particular submission.

ITT - In This Thread. Used to reference something happening in the chain of
comments. For example, “ITT, everyone is talking about the wrong event.”

Karma - When a post is submitted or a comment posted and other users vote on
it, the resulting votes are added to a user’s “karma.” Karma is meaningless other
than indicating how active a user is. There is post karma (for submissions) and
comment karma (for comments).

NSFW - Not Safe For Work. Used to indicate that the post may contain
inappropriate material not suitable to be viewed in public.

Repost - Indicates that the submission has already been posted previously. Users
are quick to point out reposts and often downvote those posts.

Cross Post (X-Post) - Indicates that a post is being made in multiple subreddits
for increased visibility. For example, a post about a new law involving
computers may be posted in the “politics” subreddit and cross-posted in the
“technology” subreddit.

TIL - Today I Learned. Indicates something interesting the user has just learned.

Throwaway - User accounts are easy to make on Reddit, so many users make a
new “throwaway” account when posting NSFW or personal information so that
their identities are not revealed.

TL;DR - Too Long; Didn’t Read. Used to summarize a long post.

There are many more terms that you will come across, some that are only used in
certain subreddits, but I will do my best to describe them as they arise.