It’s schrodingers social media platform. Simultaneously had an impact on the zeitgeist and none at all. Objectively speaking it did. The thing about reddit is it’s the one that everybody uses but nobody talks about using. So people have developed this strange cognitive dissonance. Where reddit seems to exist but also did not… because it’s required that reddit was peoples secret hideout so it can’t have been too popular because that would ruin its historical cachet.

And now the phenomenon has morphed into some other strange beast. Where reddit is right now undeniably a popular platform so that dichotomy can’t hold up anymore. Now people refer to reddit in the third person while being redditors themselves. Lately it’s very obvious seeing on reddit the users referring to “reddit” as if they aren’t themselves a part of it. This post is a very example of the phenomenon. Conservatives screeching about a fictionalized “reddit” in their head that is some kind of far left caricature. A thing that never existed. This kind of thing cuts across all kinds of intersections. People using “reddit” as a label for whatever the other side of the argument they have in their head with zero self awareness that they are “reddit” themselves.

The reality is that reddit is a sibling platform to 4chan. You cannot separate /pol/ from 4chan any more than you can separate the far right parts from reddit. To say reddit is left wing is as delusional to say 4chan is left wing. One can point to the lgbt board on 4chan and say, “look it’s the lefties”. Some how that is more digestible than selectively picking some lgbt subreddits as proof that reddit is left echo chamber.

The venn diagram of reddit, 4chan, and any given social media platform is a lot closer than people want to admit. Because apparently reddit is a secret that everyone has but nobody wants to cop to. And it’s also everyone’s favorite strawman. Except when it comes time to talk about the impact its had on the world. Then poof it doesn’t exist at all.