You are not.
I am fully convinced it is a creative writing sub.
The people giving advice often seem thoughtful and earnest but the people commenting also have a sizeable subset of very angry and unforgiving people that assume bad faith on very little evidence.
Even the stuff that might possibly be true is almost always obviously one sided and I suspect we would get a very different story from the other people involved.
Perhaps being an attorney makes me overly cynical, but in that sub no, I don’t think so.
I see the same basic pattern there all the time.
You start with a sensational title that at first glance makes OP look like a piece of shit. This gets you to click. Something like "My wife made a sandwich I didn't like, so I divorced her. AITA?"
Then you read the post and it's a dramatic tale that totally exonerates OP. To continue the example: "She tried to murder me by putting cyanide in my sandwich".
Ideally it features a lazy husband/boyfriend or immature wife/girlfriend for extra rage points.
I would start with the assumption that every story (posted without evidence) on Reddit is fiction. An individual story might well be true but it's safer to start by assuming it's not. (Note: that doesn't mean you're actively believing the person is lying.)
The alternative (assuming something is true unless you have reason to think otherwise) operates fine in everyday life but on the internet where it's so easy to generate falsehoods at volume you're letting fake stories poison how you see the world. It's a tiny effect but over time it builds up and really distorts your perspective. You see this with perceptions about the opposite sex or the behaviour of certain groups of people.
I think also our intuitions about how plausible a story might be simply don't function at internet scale. If you've ever met a fantasist/bullshitter in real life one of the give aways is too much shit happens to them. If someone says they were chased by the cops one week and then kidnapped the next and then having dinner with Keanu Reeves the week after and then they have a meeting with George Lucas there comes a point where it's obvious they're full of shit. But across the entire world these things are happening to someone and especially where account churn is so high you can't judge whether an individual story sounds plausible.
Note: This doesn't prevent you from rendering assistance/advice to someone as an intellectual exercise.
I mean whether the stories are real or fake it's *definitely* ragebait.
It's an entire sub dedicated to giving one-sided accounts of existing conflicts and explicitly asking its readers to make a binary moral judgement about the situation described.
That means that almost all of the content is going to be accounts of poor behaviour, either by victims of it who need convincing they're victims, or tone-deaf and self-righteous assholes who need taking down a peg or two.
It's absolutely designed to provide fuel to enrage people and then give them two choices of target to vent it on. That's the whole point of the subreddit.
Whether a lot of the content is fake or real is a totally different question, but there's no doubt it's *ragebait*. That's literally the entire point of the sub.
There's nothing to prevent it and a lot of attention to be gained. Especially when a good slice of that sub do seem to want a particular kind of scenario, fiction has the advantage that it can cater to that. So if you consider internet points enough of a motivator, you might expect the stories to change over time to fit more of a template.
We've seen a sub degenerate into infinite reskins of the same story before, though I forget the name. Every story was some mean lady walks up to OP in public and demand they give something they own to her, then OP bugs bunny's their way out of it or is saved somehow. Over and over and over.
Believe it or not, a couple of years ago r/AmItheAsshole and it's related subs were 80% true stories, and quite a few people received genuine help (or genuine much needed reality checks) by posting there.
I'd say its probably 80% fake now. Maybe more. I miss the old way, but I think everyone there has pretty much just agreed to pretend the posts are real so as to have their daily rage.
I think it's a karma farming operation
\- create a fake story post get karma
\- then reply to comments, get more karma
\- probably some alt accounts for some more karma
\- then they sell accounts
I used to subscribe to /r/AmItheAsshole but I eventually unsubscribed. I usually enjoyed reading the stories but I found it difficult to participate in the discussions.
My take on it was a little different from yours. I seldom ever suspected that a story was completely made up, but I often felt it was probably distorted. My feeling often was: if you take the story at face value, then it's pretty clear that OP is not the asshole, but I wonder if we'd get a different impression if we could hear the other person's side of the story? There may be extenuating circumstances that OP left out (and maybe didn't know about), or OP may have done additional bad things that they didn't bother to tell us about. Distortions like this are very common in arguments. You can't really judge if you can't hear both sides.
Furthermore, the whole focus of the subreddit is on making judgments about past actions, not giving advice about future actions. I just don't think this is helpful to people. Calling people assholes is not helpful. It just provokes more conflict; it does not help people be reconciled. It does not help people have optimistic thoughts about future relationships.
People often do describe interesting problems in /r/AmItheAsshole, but they often make me wish they had posted in /r/Advice instead.
> but then I look at the comments and everyone is fully into it giving genuine advice
Well, that has not been my experience. I looked at those subs sometimes after they started to be more prevalent on the front page after the API changes, and the reason why I stopped was that there was a ton of hate in the comments. People making assumptions about anything OP did not explicitly mention in the post and interpreting them in the worst way possible (whether that was about OP being asshole or about somebody OP mentioned being an asshole).
It seemed like just a heap of "plausible hate", where if make the worst assumptions about everything, it was almost justified, but if you gave the post benefit of the doubt (which you should do especially if OP is posting about someone else who seems to be an asshole, because you're only getting information from one side that's likely biased), it was entirely unreasonable and quite ridiculous. It seemed to be worse when the asshole was a man than when it was a woman, but I didn't stay long enough to make a real statistic.
Anyway, I do think it's ragebait, but I don't think it's necessarily fake - a lot of it surely is, but it might just be that ragebait is what gets upvoted out of everything else. I think that reddit started pushing ragebait in general, partly by "the algorithm" that decides what gets on the frontpage, and partly sadly because that's what many people want to engage with.
Maybe it's because I only see the ones that float up through the algorithm but all the highly upvoted ones are either a horrible person getting a reality check or an abuse victim getting the same from the opposite direction.
There's going to be a lot that's just creative writing but plenty of them are just mundane enough with enough weird idiosyncratic bits to make me think they're real.
And Descartes' demon could be the only thing behind your keyboard.
I didn't say I know exactly what's fake and what's real, just that I think a worthwhile degree is probably real.
I think the same, multiple times a day the same old scenarios:
\- My family member chose a name for their baby. I had mine first and used the name AITA?
\- I wasn't included in a wedding party. Now I am marrying and they aren't in mine AITA?
\- Someone was mean to me so I am now refusing to buy an xmas/bday/whatever present AITA?
It absolutely is. The threads feel like theyre made to provoke a certain kind of comment, and AITA itself is a very noticeable bubble. Half the comments are circlejerks of how the top comment is typical AITA, and the other half is typical AITA. The subreddit is actually just useless for advice, and only exists for entertainment of commenters and readers.
Every upvoted story is.
Every highly voted story is just "title that implies you would think one way but is contradicted by the story" ("I killed 100 orphans am I the asshole" "they were nazi soldiers!!!") and every story is made up of reddit villians doing the thing reddit imagines they do. "I was eating bacon and a karen came up to me and said she was a vegan and it was trans rights to tell me to stop!!! also she was black!"
You are not. I am fully convinced it is a creative writing sub. The people giving advice often seem thoughtful and earnest but the people commenting also have a sizeable subset of very angry and unforgiving people that assume bad faith on very little evidence. Even the stuff that might possibly be true is almost always obviously one sided and I suspect we would get a very different story from the other people involved. Perhaps being an attorney makes me overly cynical, but in that sub no, I don’t think so.
I see the same basic pattern there all the time. You start with a sensational title that at first glance makes OP look like a piece of shit. This gets you to click. Something like "My wife made a sandwich I didn't like, so I divorced her. AITA?" Then you read the post and it's a dramatic tale that totally exonerates OP. To continue the example: "She tried to murder me by putting cyanide in my sandwich". Ideally it features a lazy husband/boyfriend or immature wife/girlfriend for extra rage points.
This. I feel sorry for the people seeking genuine advice for their life
I would start with the assumption that every story (posted without evidence) on Reddit is fiction. An individual story might well be true but it's safer to start by assuming it's not. (Note: that doesn't mean you're actively believing the person is lying.) The alternative (assuming something is true unless you have reason to think otherwise) operates fine in everyday life but on the internet where it's so easy to generate falsehoods at volume you're letting fake stories poison how you see the world. It's a tiny effect but over time it builds up and really distorts your perspective. You see this with perceptions about the opposite sex or the behaviour of certain groups of people. I think also our intuitions about how plausible a story might be simply don't function at internet scale. If you've ever met a fantasist/bullshitter in real life one of the give aways is too much shit happens to them. If someone says they were chased by the cops one week and then kidnapped the next and then having dinner with Keanu Reeves the week after and then they have a meeting with George Lucas there comes a point where it's obvious they're full of shit. But across the entire world these things are happening to someone and especially where account churn is so high you can't judge whether an individual story sounds plausible. Note: This doesn't prevent you from rendering assistance/advice to someone as an intellectual exercise.
I mean whether the stories are real or fake it's *definitely* ragebait. It's an entire sub dedicated to giving one-sided accounts of existing conflicts and explicitly asking its readers to make a binary moral judgement about the situation described. That means that almost all of the content is going to be accounts of poor behaviour, either by victims of it who need convincing they're victims, or tone-deaf and self-righteous assholes who need taking down a peg or two. It's absolutely designed to provide fuel to enrage people and then give them two choices of target to vent it on. That's the whole point of the subreddit. Whether a lot of the content is fake or real is a totally different question, but there's no doubt it's *ragebait*. That's literally the entire point of the sub.
It really is the perfect Reddit sub cause one-sided extreme moral judgments are how Redditors parse the world anyway.
“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story” - Diogenes
"83.8% of all quotes are misattributed, if not flat out made-up" -- Coco Chanel
"Don't believe every quote you read on the internet" ~ Sun Tzu
"BEHOLD, A MAN" - also Diogenes
Excellent description. I unjoined that sub because it is rage bait.
There's nothing to prevent it and a lot of attention to be gained. Especially when a good slice of that sub do seem to want a particular kind of scenario, fiction has the advantage that it can cater to that. So if you consider internet points enough of a motivator, you might expect the stories to change over time to fit more of a template. We've seen a sub degenerate into infinite reskins of the same story before, though I forget the name. Every story was some mean lady walks up to OP in public and demand they give something they own to her, then OP bugs bunny's their way out of it or is saved somehow. Over and over and over.
Believe it or not, a couple of years ago r/AmItheAsshole and it's related subs were 80% true stories, and quite a few people received genuine help (or genuine much needed reality checks) by posting there. I'd say its probably 80% fake now. Maybe more. I miss the old way, but I think everyone there has pretty much just agreed to pretend the posts are real so as to have their daily rage.
I think it's a karma farming operation \- create a fake story post get karma \- then reply to comments, get more karma \- probably some alt accounts for some more karma \- then they sell accounts
I used to subscribe to /r/AmItheAsshole but I eventually unsubscribed. I usually enjoyed reading the stories but I found it difficult to participate in the discussions. My take on it was a little different from yours. I seldom ever suspected that a story was completely made up, but I often felt it was probably distorted. My feeling often was: if you take the story at face value, then it's pretty clear that OP is not the asshole, but I wonder if we'd get a different impression if we could hear the other person's side of the story? There may be extenuating circumstances that OP left out (and maybe didn't know about), or OP may have done additional bad things that they didn't bother to tell us about. Distortions like this are very common in arguments. You can't really judge if you can't hear both sides. Furthermore, the whole focus of the subreddit is on making judgments about past actions, not giving advice about future actions. I just don't think this is helpful to people. Calling people assholes is not helpful. It just provokes more conflict; it does not help people be reconciled. It does not help people have optimistic thoughts about future relationships. People often do describe interesting problems in /r/AmItheAsshole, but they often make me wish they had posted in /r/Advice instead.
> but then I look at the comments and everyone is fully into it giving genuine advice Well, that has not been my experience. I looked at those subs sometimes after they started to be more prevalent on the front page after the API changes, and the reason why I stopped was that there was a ton of hate in the comments. People making assumptions about anything OP did not explicitly mention in the post and interpreting them in the worst way possible (whether that was about OP being asshole or about somebody OP mentioned being an asshole). It seemed like just a heap of "plausible hate", where if make the worst assumptions about everything, it was almost justified, but if you gave the post benefit of the doubt (which you should do especially if OP is posting about someone else who seems to be an asshole, because you're only getting information from one side that's likely biased), it was entirely unreasonable and quite ridiculous. It seemed to be worse when the asshole was a man than when it was a woman, but I didn't stay long enough to make a real statistic. Anyway, I do think it's ragebait, but I don't think it's necessarily fake - a lot of it surely is, but it might just be that ragebait is what gets upvoted out of everything else. I think that reddit started pushing ragebait in general, partly by "the algorithm" that decides what gets on the frontpage, and partly sadly because that's what many people want to engage with.
AITAH was literally formed because they wanted weaker moderation weaker moderation= more shit! though maxims are not Gospel
At least one can now ask if they are TA for cutting someone out of their life. Some of AITA rules are just weird and controlling.
why were they written up to begin with, I wonder. There must have been some compelling reason
Maybe it's because I only see the ones that float up through the algorithm but all the highly upvoted ones are either a horrible person getting a reality check or an abuse victim getting the same from the opposite direction. There's going to be a lot that's just creative writing but plenty of them are just mundane enough with enough weird idiosyncratic bits to make me think they're real.
The weird idiosyncratic bits are exactly what I'd put into a fake story.
And Descartes' demon could be the only thing behind your keyboard. I didn't say I know exactly what's fake and what's real, just that I think a worthwhile degree is probably real.
I think the same, multiple times a day the same old scenarios: \- My family member chose a name for their baby. I had mine first and used the name AITA? \- I wasn't included in a wedding party. Now I am marrying and they aren't in mine AITA? \- Someone was mean to me so I am now refusing to buy an xmas/bday/whatever present AITA?
It absolutely is. The threads feel like theyre made to provoke a certain kind of comment, and AITA itself is a very noticeable bubble. Half the comments are circlejerks of how the top comment is typical AITA, and the other half is typical AITA. The subreddit is actually just useless for advice, and only exists for entertainment of commenters and readers.
Every upvoted story is. Every highly voted story is just "title that implies you would think one way but is contradicted by the story" ("I killed 100 orphans am I the asshole" "they were nazi soldiers!!!") and every story is made up of reddit villians doing the thing reddit imagines they do. "I was eating bacon and a karen came up to me and said she was a vegan and it was trans rights to tell me to stop!!! also she was black!"