Wikipedia is one of the best resources of knowledge, but it can’t answer everything. What flavor is McDonald’s Grimace shake? Which stylus works best with a Chromebook? What’s the best car for a family of four? Reddit has the answers.
This is Life, Documented
Reddit is essentially just a forum, but it’s much more useful than most forums. For starters, there are simply a lot more people using Reddit. That means it has a wide variety of perspectives. But perhaps even more importantly, Reddit is not geared toward any specific topic or genre—it’s wide open.
Take r/whatisthisthing for example. This subreddit is all about helping people identify unknown objects. Say you find a weird tool in a shed and you’re not sure what it’s for. Upload a photo to the subreddit and people will tell you it’s a skateboard tool. You may not even need to make that effort. Enter a description in the search bar and you might find someone else who found the same thing.
Maybe you have a few plants scattered around your house, but you don’t really know that much about them. Now one of them is dying and you’re not sure what to do. Hop on over to r/houseplants and you’ll find people who had the same problem with the same type of plant. Reading the comments, you can see what worked and didn’t work for people. Think of all the trial and error you can skip.
Reddit isn’t just strange niche subreddits—there are tons of genuinely helpful communities for just about anything you can imagine. If there’s something you’re interested in or have a question about, chances are someone has already talked about it on Reddit. Real people are sharing their real experiences every day.
I’d Like to Talk to a Human
Unfortunately, it’s becoming harder and harder to trust recommendations found on the internet, which is why Reddit’s best feature is the humans who use it.
Let’s say you’re interested in buying a new bicycle. A good place to start is a simple web search for “best bicycles.” You’re going to find tons of different websites with lists such as “10 Best Bicycles in 2023,” etc. Some of these lists will be very good—first-hand experience, thorough testing, and the writers actually know about bikes.
However, scattered amongst those genuinely good lists will be some very unhelpful results. Lists that have been hastily scraped together without anyone actually touching a bike or knowing anything about the models they’re recommending. The sad truth is it can sometimes be hard to tell the good and the bad apart.
Alternatively, you could go over to r/cycling and search for the same thing. You’ll find people talking about the best bike under $350, best bike for climbing hills, and much more. The beauty of these results is you’ll hear from people who not only tested a bike for a review, but also likely own and use the bike personally, or can share their own shopping advice.
While there certainly are bots and astroturfing on Reddit, the real people usually are quick to point them out. That’s the other great thing about getting advice from actual humans—they’re quick to point out bad advice, too.
Cutting Through the Noise
It’s not just low-effort product recommendations that have made search engines harder to use. An increasing number of ads and generative AI “answers” have made them more user-hostile, too. There’s just so much to wade through when doing a simple search—sometimes you need to narrow it down.
If you’ve ever added “Reddit” to the end of a Google search, you’ve already done this. As mentioned, there is plenty of genuinely great content being created on respectable websites, but it’s not always easy to find. People add “Reddit” to the end of searches as a way to eliminate some of that uncertainty.
Make no mistake, Reddit is not a magical utopia of factually correct information and perfect recommendations. There are some very bad corners of Reddit, and the company that runs it has made some questionable decisions, too. But at the end of the day, you can at least feel like you’re reading real people’s experiences.
Sometimes, you just want a bangin’ recipe for potato salad.