1 upvotes, 12 direct replies (showing 12)
View submission: The NewToReddit Encyclopaedia Redditica v2
Other Useful Dictionaries, Encyclopaedias and Lexicons
Comment by llamageddon01 at 23/10/2021 at 08:16 UTC*
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
A recent (2021) addition to your Reddit Profile is your Online Status. This is optional. If you don’t want to share your online status, you can disable the feature by tapping the Online Status button below your Snoovatar, or the ‘privacy options’ section of your preferences, uncheck ‘Let others see my online status’ then click ‘save options’.
When you turn off Online Status, people won’t see any status for you at all - not even an indicator saying that you’re offline or that you’ve selected ‘Off’. Accounts that you’ve blocked will never see your online status. Additionally, if an account is banned from a community, they won't be able to see the online status of anyone in that community. Here’s what the updated status and controls look like[1].
1: https://preview.redd.it/jf9ncycvzfn61.png
Comment by llamageddon01 at 13/05/2022 at 17:14 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Online Manipulation can be defined to be the use of human psychological weaknesses to redirect behaviour on wide-ranging hidden agendas ranging from something as simple as buying a non-existent t-shirt or print on a subreddit to voting in a real-world political election. Studies[1] on the various abilities and techniques[2] of all kinds of bad actors to manipulate us[3] in ways that are not in our best interests are simultaneously fascinating and chilling.
2: https://cxl.com/blog/online-manipulation-all-the-ways-youre-currently-being-deceived/
3: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1320040111
Manipulation isn’t new. In 2019, Forbes ran a fascinating article[4] on Edward Bernays, the “father of public relations,”[5] whose pioneering techniques for influencing public opinion and behavior date all the way back to the first decade of the 20th century.
5: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/08/16/specials/bernays-obit.html
Knowing we’re being manipulated isn’t new either. Vance Packard’s *”The Hidden Persuaders”* was first published in 1957 and was one of the first popular books to describe the psychological techniques advertisers and marketers use to sell us their wares. Incidentally, his book *”The Waste Makers”* was one of the first to draw our attention to planned obsolescence too.
Things that seem obvious to us today are only so because people like this over the years opened our eyes to what goes on behind the scenes. To quote from the Forbes article: *Bernays created a campaign called “Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet,” fostering the impression that smoking aided weight loss. The campaign featured images of slender women smoking cigarettes. Much to the detriment of public health for a century to come, women bought into it.*. They bought into it because then, that was a new way of thinking, little realising it was nothing else but a sales technique.
Nowadays, we all know that billboard-style advertising isn’t nearly so innocent as it appears to be, but they didn’t know that then so the technique worked. What we need to be aware of these days is that strategies used in the promotion of consumerism are still used to sway thought patterns in general, and, like then, they aren’t obvious. Marketers are still employing the findings of psychology in order to market more aggressively to consumers, but in a lot more sophisticated ways and for far more things than just selling cigarettes. Our entry on Astroturfing[6] looks at who might be doing this and why.
6: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhhi2si/
In “normal” Redditing, Reddit’s favourite techniques for manipulation come mostly in the form of diversionary tactics using logical fallacies and confirmation biases, like this example of “Reddit Bingo” shows[7], and below you’ll find some links on the more common ones.
8: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhhi2si/
9: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hh8l89y/
10: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhhq94y/
11: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhhskbf/
12: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhi8q57/
13: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhia1a3/
14: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhib3lr/
15: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhifx7j/
16: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhiiesf/
17: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hh8tvk1/
18: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhirvqx/
19: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/i6jgeou/
20: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hh8x92b/
21: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/i6o7xgr/
22: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhleky9/
23: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hho69q8/
24: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/i86ih8c/
25: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhqw4ki/
26: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhu1xlg/
27: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhu1zen/
Comment by llamageddon01 at 14/05/2022 at 20:59 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Oversharing is when people share too much personal information to someone they’re talking to whether a family member or friend, a stranger, or online. However, it can be a big problem on many social media sites, which make "putting yourself online" easy, especially with the rise of the genre of social media that requires you to document your lifestyle in every little detail. Oversharing is quite subjective and it can be confusing as to what content constitutes oversharing as everyone's comfort level and perspectives are different. Even the social media platform used varies widely on what’s counted as oversharing; whereas something like NextDoor generally frowns upon using nicknames and likes you to “sign” your contributions, Reddit generally frowns upon the use of real names, and any attempt to “sign” your posts or comments will be met with derision.
An infographic[1] produced in 2012 for Online-education[2] concludes that oversharing comes from three main emotional causes: *It’s Satisfying*; *We’re Upset* and *We’re Excited*. While the infographic is a good introduction and even cites research sources, it only really scratches the surface of this issue. Certainly there are far more - and deeper - psychological reasons at play, and as you would expect, oversharing is frequently discussed at the support subreddits r/ADHD, r/selfimprovement, r/socialskills, r/Anxiety, and r/socialanxiety (among others) for example:
1: https://i.redd.it/ztqwjq252fz81.png
2: https://www.online-education.net
https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/dzclrt/how_do_i_stop_oversharing/
https://www.reddit.com/r/selfimprovement/comments/t39wdx/how_do_i_stop_oversharing_with_people/
https://www.reddit.com/r/socialskills/comments/f8584j/how_do_i_keep_from_oversharing/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Anxiety/comments/o65y8h/omg_do_you_cringe_at_yourself_for_oversharing_in/
https://www.reddit.com/r/socialanxiety/comments/1qoxl7/anyone_hear_overshare_about_their_lives/
All the above posts give varying levels of advice and coping strategies which are worth reading if you feel that oversharing might be an issue for you or someone you know.
Simply put, the real reason we overshare online is because the platforms want us to[3]. Information and details about individuals can be incredibly valuable, and they - we - have become a valuable commodity[4].
3: https://www.makeuseof.com/stop-oversharing-social-media/
Social media outlets give us that satisfying dopamine hit[5], and we give them our every private detail in return[6]. They are playing on our instinctive needs to make us feel we have to share everything because everyone else does, just to keep us online. In return, they are harvesting our personal information and driving us to overconsumption while simultaneously causing us social anxiety because our lives aren’t “like that” but we’re told they can or should be. And the longer we stay online there, the more advertising revenue[7] we generate for them too.
5: https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/dopamine-the-pathway-to-pleasure
6: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306422020917608
7: https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/digital-advertising/social-media-advertising/worldwide
In a normal conversation, if one person shares a life detail (“I’m doing X tomorrow”) it’s natural to reciprocate (“You lucky thing, I always wanted to do X”). Because online life isn’t as provable as that, it’s impossible to tell how much of the lives of others is authentic, and we can easily get sucked into exaggeration as everyone tries to outdo each other. As I say in the entry FOMO[8]:
8: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhirvqx/
Instagram *et al* creates distorted perceptions of the carefully edited lives of others. The constant “upward social comparisons” and unreasonable expectations we are constantly bombarded with can adversely impact our self-esteem. We can easily feel lonely and inadequate through the relentless highlighting of the “perfect lives” of others[9] in comparison with our own daily routine-led existence.
It helps to remind ourselves that in the end people are desperately trying to show themselves in the best possible light on social networks, and Subreddits like r/Instagramreality highlight the subtle[10] and the not-so-subtle[11] use of tools like Facetune and Photoshop in portraying unreality as reality.
Seeing shouldn’t always be believing, on social media at least.
Reddit can be a great place to work on your social skills because you alone decide the level and tone of your interactions; you can “walk away” from any conversation for any reason at any time, and most importantly, because nobody knows you, nothing that is said here is really *that* personal. Don’t forget, on Reddit, nobody really pays attention to - or even remembers - usernames.
As well as the subreddits already mentioned, we have many places to explore personal growth such as r/selfhelp, r/declutter, r/habits, r/decidingtobebetter, r/howtonotgiveafuck, r/getdisciplined and r/nosurf: a community of people who are focused on becoming more productive and wasting less time mindlessly surfing the internet.
Online people have a strange identity; some have likened it to be almost as if everyone else is an NPC[12] in the video game of your life. We know they’re real people, but at the same time they’re no more real than the Social Bunny[13] or the Tragic Clown[14] are in “The Sims”. Sometimes that’s even true, as in 2020, it was discovered a GPT-3 bot had been posting in one subreddit for a whole week[15] without being noticed.
13: https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Social_Bunny
14: https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Tragic_Clown
Remember that social media isn’t your life - or anyone else’s. Social media is a useful tool. However, be careful not to let it take over your life. Don't feel like you need to "prove" yourself on social media. In real life, most people don't really care about others' personal lives as much as the internet would have you believe, and when these lives aren’t “real” in the first place, even less.
r/Overshare chronicles those times when people give out Too Much Information, way more than we needed to know, pls stahp, while r/insanepeoplefacebook, r/Instagramreality, r/insanepeopletwitter, and r/TikTokCringe are all places to call out exaggerated claims seen on their respective platforms, and r/quityourbullshit calls out anything ridiculous from anywhere.
16: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhia8yc/
17: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hh8q5ez/
18: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhifs24/
19: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhirvqx/
20: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhldwpq/
21: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hho6end/
22: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/i8153zf/
23: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/i8h3qbt/
24: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhqwvwq/
25: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/p8t966/reddit_and_karma_explained/h9ssyt6/
Comment by llamageddon01 at 19/10/2021 at 22:03 UTC*
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
A link or phrase posted when people fall for a satirical product made by the prankster ObviousPlant[1] and Redditor u/obviousplant by mistaking it for a genuine product. This Subreddit documents the times people fell for one of his pranks or fake toys[2] thinking it might be a bootleg “knock-off”. r/ObviousPlant.
2: https://www.boredpanda.com/funny-fake-products-obvious-plant/
Real “off brands” of varying quality can be found on Reddit[3] and *caveat emptor* (“Buyer Beware” i.e. the buyer purchases at their own risk) on any of those subreddits as we also have an unhealthy amount of scammers[4] on Reddit. That cute T-Shirt or print[5] you see on a random sub won’t be what it looks like either.
3: https://www.redpoints.com/blog/reddit-fashion-replicas/
4: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhcqgtf/
5: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhcvbfx/
Please read the official rules on using Reddit as a marketplace[6]. When considering a gift or transaction of goods or services not prohibited by this policy, keep in mind that Reddit is not intended to be used as a marketplace and takes no responsibility for any transactions individual users might decide to undertake in spite of this. Always remember: you are dealing with strangers on the internet[7] who may well not be who they say they are.
6: https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043513471
7: https://miro.medium.com/max/1000/0*Wv5rHUzi5-61HcCw.jpg
Actual fakery and more absurdity can be found at: r/AwesomeOffBrands, r/crappyoffbrands, r/RipOffBrands and r/sbubby. If something is just, well, bad, try r/CrappyDesign, r/BadDesigns, r/designfails, r/graphicdesignfail, r/ShittyDesign, and r/TVTooHigh: of all the places in the home or office to install a television, why there?
r/onejob is the repository for the classic "You Had One Job!" moments, while r/ididthejobboss is for those "Task failed successfully" moments of doing something perfectly in an unexpected manner or even something stupid which technically completes the task.
For intentional bad design, try r/HostileArchitecture where public spaces are constructed or altered to discourage people from using them in a way not intended by the owner, r/crazystairs (and escalators too) and the wonderfully bizarre r/PurpleCoco for some extremely odd places to find power outlets.
8: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhi85m3/3
9: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhle0an/
10: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhuk3gs/
Comment by llamageddon01 at 19/10/2021 at 22:04 UTC*
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
“Original Content”. We are all feeding from each other, all the time, every day. But you should only use this tag for stuff you absolutely made yourself. Don’t ever post other people’s stuff and call it OC; Redditors are keener than bloodhounds and will sniff it out within minutes. Downvotes and maybe even worse will surely follow, and you don’t want to appear on r/quityourbullshit.
As the initialism “OC” has different associations, I would be remiss in not mentioning r/TheOC for the "official" subreddit of the American teen drama television series “The O.C.”. Or indeed r/OrangeCounty - the subreddit for Orange County, California.
Comment by llamageddon01 at 23/10/2021 at 07:57 UTC*
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Every so often, Reddit needs to make general announcements meant to reach all users. These are usually about changes to the Reddit interface, updates, bug fixes, changes to the Content Policy, starting / discontinuing Reddit processes, events, campaigns or any other sitewide issues. Sometimes these appear in a banner notice at the top of your page when you first open Reddit, but not always, and the best place to keep in touch with what’s happening here is:
Relaunched in 2022, it replaced several different subs which are all now closed to new submissions but remain there as useful archives:
Other subreddits for official Reddit announcements that are still kept up-to-date are:
Subscribing to them won’t clog up your feed as they aren’t the busiest of places, but will help ensure you don’t miss anything you might need to know about changes to Reddit.
r/shittychangelog is like r/changelog, but, y'know.
Comment by llamageddon01 at 23/10/2021 at 07:58 UTC*
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
One-word replies are often seen as low-quality and often frowned upon in Reddit. So don’t post them. Except when you should. You have to know the rules to know when you can break them and some notable exceptions are Cat. or cat., (when you see a cat in a picture), Nice., (when you see the number 69), This^ or This., (when you want to agree with a point). Ah, Reddit; never change.
r/onewordeach is a subreddit for group improv one word at a time, while r/AskOuija answers your burning questions one letter at a time. Looking quite elaborate in comparison, r/threewordstories is a growing community of storytellers who collaborate to tell epic tales. The tricky part…. You can only submit 3 words at a time.
Comment by llamageddon01 at 23/10/2021 at 08:20 UTC*
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
“Original Poster”. The person who made the submission that is now being commented upon. I am the OP of this post. It’s easier to refer to me as OP instead of having to type my username and risk “pinging” me every single time.
2: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/p8t966/reddit_and_karma_explained/h9sqcti/
Comment by llamageddon01 at 23/10/2021 at 08:21 UTC*
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Orangered refers to the colour (orange/red) of the envelope that glowed when you had a new Direct Message (before it was replaced with the bell icon) and the default Upvote arrow. r/dataisbeautiful gives a good explanation with an infographic[1].
Orangered (FF4500, PMS 172 C), is actually Reddit’s primary brand color, chosen for its vibrancy & distinctiveness.[2] It has provoked arguments[3], and sparked a conflict[4] which led to having its own trophy[5] as did its opponent[6].
2: https://www.redditinc.com/brand
3: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/rdankmemes-upvote-arrow-color-debate
5: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrophyWiki/comments/f0prgq/reddit_trophy_team_orangered/
6: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrophyWiki/comments/f0prvr/reddit_trophy_team_periwinkle/
Comment by llamageddon01 at 23/10/2021 at 08:24 UTC*
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
As I say in the preface: “This is a list of some common acronyms, initialisms, terms, memes, references and responses often used on the internet with an emphasis on those specifically used on Reddit. ...in no way intended to be definitive...”. There are far more Internet terms and memes and pop-culture references and cognitive biases and new definitions and logical fallacies than I could possibly cover here, and some valuable resources include:
1: https://allthetropes.fandom.com/wiki/All_The_Tropes_Wiki
5: https://www.acronymfinder.com
6: https://www.urbandictionary.com
7: https://dramatica.online/index.php?title=Main_Page
8: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page
9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About
r/wikipedia collects some of the most interesting pages on Wikipedia, r/coolguides have picture based reference guides for anything and everything and r/tvtropes discuss both T.V. tropes and the website. r/4chan (NSFW) also exists. The bot u/WikipediaSummary is an opt-in service bot created by u/Gullyn1 that replies to comments with a summary of Wikipedia articles.
10: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhhsd8u/
11: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhi8q57/
12: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhiiesf/
13: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhleky9/
14: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hh9bf9f/
15: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hho69q8/
16: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hha7aan/
17: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/qbb173/comment/hhqxawp/
Comment by llamageddon01 at 23/10/2021 at 08:26 UTC*
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
An acronym with several meanings (One-time Password or On The Phone in txt-spk), on Reddit this stands for “One True Pairing”. A crossover from Tumblr, you’ll often see this on fandom based subreddits where it signifies a person’s favourite fictional romantic relationship[1], or “ship”.
1: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/what-does-otp-mean-one-true-pairing
Once a “ship” is established, it’s then usually written as: Character/Character, CharacterxCharacter or even as CharActer - a blend of the characters’ names to create a new portmanteau[2] word.
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmanteau
Comment by llamageddon01 at 13/06/2022 at 18:19 UTC*
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Occam's Razor is a saying commonly known as an “Eponymous Law”, but more accurately as a Philosophical Razor[1] that reads ”Entities should not be multiplied without necessity.”[2].
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_razor
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
In philosophy, a razor is a principle or a rule of thumb that allows for the elimination (the “shaving off”) of unlikely explanations for a phenomenon.
Applied broadly, this particular principle suggests that out of two competing theories, the simpler explanation is more likely to be correct. Also called “the law of economy” or “the law of parsimony”, Occam's Razor gives precedence to simplicity to avoid unnecessary or improbable assumptions. This principle is attributed to the 14th century logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham, but the general idea goes back at least as far as Aristotle, who wrote *"Nature operates in the shortest way possible."*
It is important to note that, like any mental model, Occam’s Razor is not foolproof. There are exceptions to any rule, and we should never blindly follow the results of applying a mental model which logic, experience, or empirical evidence contradict. When you hear hoofbeats behind you, in most cases you should think horses, not zebras - unless you are out on the African savannah. Or alpacas if you’re in Birmingham (U.K.)[3].
3: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2022/06/10/alpaca-runs-loose-Soho-Road-Birmingham/1591654875799/
The opposite of Occam’s Razor is “Occam’s Duct Tape”, which is when someone approaches a problem with a ridiculously large number of assumptions. Also known as Occam's Krazy Glue or Occam's Stapler, this is only used ironically as it involves making as many unnecessary and irrelevant assumptions as possible.
While a philosophical razor can be a useful mental shortcut that allows you to make decisions and solve problems quickly and easily, it is not an unbreakable law or rule, and several “anti-razors” have been devised over the years to counter them.
For instance, Walter Chatton (c. 1290–1343) was a contemporary of William of Ockham who took exception to Occam's Razor and Ockham's use of it. In response he devised his own Anti-razor: *"If three things are not enough to verify an affirmative proposition about things, a fourth must be added, and so on."*
A paraphrase of Occam's Razor (the simplest diagnosis is the most likely to be correct) forms one of the three maxims of medicine[4], with the other two being anti-razors: Hickam's Dictum (multiple disease entities are more likely than one), and Crabtree's Bludgeon (the tendency to make data fit to an explanation we hold dear).
4: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34355545/
5: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/577801
Whichever explanation is correct, Hickam’s Dictum was a response to when one single unifying diagnosis is not possible. While Occam's Razor suggests that the simplest explanation is the most likely, implying in medicine that diagnosticians should assume a single cause for multiple symptoms, one form of Hickam’s Dictum states: *"A man can have as many diseases as he damn well pleases.”* So, for instance, while a headache diagnosed with Occam’s Razor is just, in fact, a headache (which for the vast majority of cases is true), Hickam’s Dictum allows for the possibility for it to also be a symptom of something less benign (which in significantly fewer cases is also true).
Reddit, as you would expect, takes Occam's Razor Very Seriously Indeed™[6], and is a common subject[7] often raised at ELI5 or CMV[8].
6: https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/nad12f/how_does_one_use_ockhams_razor_properly/
7: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ua12u/eli5_why_is_occams_razor_a_thing/
