Reddit is the only site you’ll ever need.
It’ll suck your life-force. It will dominate
your spare time. It’s effectively a bunch
of forums on everything you could ever want.
Like AMD? Visit the AMD subreddit. Like watching
children falling over? Check out the Childrenfallingover
page to see the finest collection of stupid
children falling over that the world has ever
seen.
I did a video 2 years ago where I listed my
favourite ones. And now I’m going to add
some more for your viewing pleasure.
MISLEADINGTHUMBNAILS takes advantage of the
low-resolution preview picture that accompanies
every post and attempts to fool you with its
description. Is that a crowd at a concert?
No! It’s a view of chair legs from carpet-height.
Is that a spilt drink? …No! It’s a dog
with its head in a cup! Is this the World’s
Largest Cheese Steak? No! It’s… a dead
body.
And this is where Reddit gets a bit confusing.
Because some content is suitable for multiple
different pages, often reposted for useless
upvote points. And this brings me onto the
second subreddit I’ll be showing you:
FORBIDDENSNACKS. This is like a sub-section
of MISLEADINGTHUMBNAILS, with a focus on appealing
looking thumbnails which turn out to be something
that you wouldn’t want to eat. Like that
dead body. Another is the back of Darth Vader’s
head, which looks strangely like icecream.
And these gummy bears, which are actually
soap. Not that gummy bears would fool me,
I went off them a while ago.
ASKOUIJA is great. People submit sentences
with a blank bit, and the community votes
up individual letters until a word is revealed.
And the results are surprisingly witty- better
than you’d expect from, well, the internet
in general. Here are some examples, I can
quietly chuckle at them without making it
obvious that I have the humour of a 13-year-old.
2HEALTHBARS is typically something similar
inside something else. A classic example is
the guy with the bucket on his head, who then
turns out to have another on underneath. It’s
funny because it is. They’re unexpected,
mildly amusing things that have typically
had a bit of thought put into them.
LIKEUS shows animals acting like humans. A
surprisingly innocent and heart-warming subreddit
by my standards, but I can’t help but like
it. Although we haven’t found intelligent
life anywhere else in the Universe, this reassures
us that animals are capable of acting very
much like us. Or maybe just that we’re as
stupid as animals are. Who knows.
And to balance that one out, REVERSEANIMALRESCUE.
A subreddit that gets heart-warming rescues…
and reverses them. Turns out better than expected,
and you’re free to laugh at them because
you know that, in reality, everything turns
out okay. Probably.
Similarly, TOMBSTONING, where 2 perfectly
normal things, when put next to each other,
suddenly take on a different meaning but it’s
all okay because they’re not linked in any
way other than where they’re placed on the
page. North Korea fires projectiles? Tennis
player fires back! 1 in 4 women will be beaten
by husbands? KEEP HIM FIGHTING FIT WITH THESE
3 BELTERS! Some of these are so (in)appropriate
that I can’t help but think they were done
intentionally. But it’s best to imagine
they’re merely overlooked coincidences in
a popular newspaper that your Mum might read.
CHOOSINGBEGGARS almost doesn’t need mention
because of how popular it’s become in the
short time it’s been up. It’s a subreddit
I love to hate, filled with people asking
for work to be done for free. There are tons
of great examples, but I fear it’s already
peaked with this beautiful example of a woman
looking for a free 20-seater coach, rudely
shooting down kind offers from people trying
to help with an abrupt, ‘NEXT!’
Accidentalswastika pays homage to the beautiful,
but tarnished shape that is the swastika.
Humour is attained in situations where it’s
entirely accidental, be it housing complexes,
star-gazing guides, or in a shoe’s print
pattern that you just know has left thousands
of accidentalswastikas in its wake.
A similar, but slightly different shape is
the fullscorpion, a painful shape that you
don’t want your body to make where your
legs bend back over your head. Like a scorpion!
Some of these are painful. You have been warned.
There’s an abundance of memes on Reddit.
I frequent TRIPPINTHROUGHTIME, and occasionally
DANKMEMES. Most memes, I don’t find funny.
And these subreddits are no exception. But
occasionally something comes up that’s so
funny it makes me breathe the wrong way, inhaling
my sardines and inducing a coughing fit. But
the content is so good that it’s WORTH it!
Bossfight is full of slightly silly things
that could double as a boss that you’d face
in 90’s videogame. Enter this Subreddit
with a love of videogames and a bit of imagination
and you’ll find a few laughs along the way.
And lastly, the League of Mildly Interesting
Gentlemen is for people with unusual and almost
completely pointless skills. You may find
that you’re not alone in in sporting a weirdly
flexible finger or a tongue that can make
abnormally loud clicking sounds. This is not
a large subreddit, but I think that makes
it even better that the submissions that are
here actually exist. I’m subscribed to this
one. An investment so that, in 5 years’
time, when it’s Reddit’s most popular
page, I can proudly say that I was here before
it was cool.
And those are some of the excellent time-wasters
I’ve found, for when you’ve got work to
do but need an excuse not to. Reddit is becoming
increasingly anti-Trump, which is a huge turn-off
for me. Not that I’m a fan of the guy, but
I grow tired of having him plastered across
my screen, ALWAYS in a negative way. I grew
up, looking in on things like the Daily Mail
and wondering how people could read something
so one-sided, and yet here I am now on Reddit
which has become equally one-sided, and equally
sure in itself that it’s fair and unbiased.
But me? I’m on Reddit for fun! Not politics.
Just be aware that Trump’s presence creeps
into almost every subreddit, no matter how
unrelated. Though so far, Fullscorpion has
remained free.
Funny, that.
