[DISCUSSIONPOST] What is a Redditor?

What is a redditor? Is it a person that merely uses reddit? Or are there spiritual qualities of a person that makes them a redditor? Can a person be a redditor without using reddit? Can a person use reddit without being a redditor? I ask because the term "redditor" has become mixed up in a whole lot of other ideas, including consumerism, soullessness, atheism, etc.

I'm interested in your opinions, so please leave a comment below. As for me, here's my current theory on what makes a redditor...

1. Complete Deference To Mainstream Opinion: Modern redditors will almost always follow the general thrust of mainstream opinion. I hope that my readers will understand that I'm not referring to whoever holds the most power in society - this is a thing that swings back and forth as time goes on - but rather what are considered generally acceptable opinions, especially as expressed by the media and corporate interests. Having mainstream opinions is not unusual, obviously (otherwise they wouldn't be mainstream, right?), but what is unusual is complete deference to those opinions. Most people have at least some thought process and disagreements with mainstream consensus.

2. Celebration of Dweebishness: I don't mean that redditors are dweebs - many of them are, but that's not the point. Everyone has low points, everyone feels afraid or sad or lazy at times. The difference between a normal person and a redditor is that redditors celebrate their own dweebishness. They celebrate their lowliness and refuse to even consider changing. There is a psychological element of inferiority at play here. They don't think they are capable of being better, and they are afraid of failing in the process of being better, so they linger in a familiar heck.

3. Rejection of Normalcy: This is the other side of Point 2. Anything that is things that "other people" do is instantly negative. Sports, Family, Popular social media, Religion, Homeownership, and being well groomed are all classic examples. Again, the hatred of these things is mostly a reflection of their own sense of inferiority. They don't think they can be normal, and thinking about themselves in comparison to others makes them feel inferior, so they reject normalcy as a whole.

4. Obsession with Objectivity: In any issue, redditors believe, if something can't be proven with logic, it is worthless and even harmful. The biggest example of this is reddit's neurodivergent atheism. They don't just not believe in God, they are obsessed with their lack of belief in God. For instance, getting pissy when someone says "Thank God". To put it another way - they only live in their Ego Mind. They've cut off any connection to anything deeper within themselves, chalking any conflict up to a variety of mental illnesses (see also: point 2). Another example is living in pods. "Living in pods is more economical and better for the environment. It's dehumanizing, you say? I'm going to need a source for that claim. Clearly, you're being irrational, so you are mentally ill, so you will need to take some anti-depressants."

5. Pseudo-Anonymity: On reddit, you don't form connections with individuals, you form connections with content. It would be extremely unusual on reddit to remember someone's username and think of them as an individual user with idiosyncrasies and tastes. The difference between reddit and 4chan, however, is that anons are literally anonymous, and suffer no real repercussions for acting strangely, whereas on reddit you get punished, both by karma and being banned. There's two sides of this - on the one hand, reddit as a website encourages this with the technical details of the website, where usernames are small and they all look the same. On the other hand, all redditors act in essentially the same way. They have the same opinions and behaviors. This, of course, ends up leaking into the rest of their lives.

6. Obsession with Things apart from their Intrinsic Qualities: This is a super-wordy way to describe "franchise consumerism", because the consoomer meme doesn't capture the absurdity of these people. Consider Star Wars, for instance. The original Star Wars trilogy were genuinely good - not in a nerdy sci-fi sense, but just as movies. There had lovable characters, an engaging plot, a simple theme about good and evil with a little bit of heroes journey stuff. Star Wars fanboys, however, don't care about the movie, they care about the franchise. They think that it was the laser swords and jedi that made Star Wars good, so they consume any piece of media that has laser swords and jedi - for instance, the Prequels and the Sequels. Another example is LotR - one of the greatest pieces of fantasy ever written, with masterful and poetic writing and themes about how insignificant people can play a big role in resisting evil - is reduced down to the setting and characters and "lore", so they obsess over any piece of media with those elements.

7. General Sense of Negativity, Dread, and Cynicism: Redditors are negative about everything, unless it is one of their pet obsessions. Everything is going down the drain in the world for redditors. The greedy corporations are actively ruining X, before long X will be gone, X isn't even that good anyways, X used to be good but now it isn't. The world is a few years away from ending and we will all starve to death, earth is overpopulated so anyone having children is evil, even if we get our guys into office, the other guys will ruin it from the shadows. Nothing is good about the world, everything is 100% bleak. Ironically, the best example of this is the opposite: /r/WholesomeMemes, which is a response to this overwhelming sentiment. Even the posts about hecking doggos are laced with a bitter irony or two-facedness - this is all just a short distraction until we return to our nihilistic existence. This contributes to Point 6, because redditors try to escape this with muh nostalgia and returning to an "idyllic youth". It is contributed to by 2 and 4, because being so obsessed with their ego mind, they are unable to accept their own flaws. I think their is a psychological element here as well, where redditors project their own flawed state onto the world at large.

8. Humor is Repeating Things: Redditors think that the peak of comedy is repeating things. They make references, quote movies, etc. Outside of that, their comedy is post-ironic self-reference to - you guessed it - other funny things. This is the notion of a circlejerk.

9. They think they are significant: To be fair, reddit has 50 million daily visitors. However, only 1% of those users comment every month. That leaves us with 500,000 active redditors worldwide. If all of those redditors were in the United States, they would make up just over a thousandth of a percent of the population. (Assuming US population is 330 million). Any redditor that you see calling for a revolution is calling for 0.001% of the population to go against the other 99.999%. They have no power whatsoever.