Every Atheist Needs: Reddit

I’ve talked about Reddit here a lot, due to the fact that it had a heavy hand in my self-identification as an atheist and becoming an outspoken atheist blogger. But do you know what Reddit is?

Simply put, Reddit is a news aggregation site. Users submit links or text posts to the best suited “subreddit” so that their post can be voted and commented on. Users can upvote and downvote each submission and a complex algorithm assesses the voting and displays the most upvoted, recent posts at the top of the subreddit. Here’s a great CGP Grey video about how it works:

As an atheist, Reddit is valuable not just for the atheist subreddits, but because sitewide, the overwhelming majority of users treat most things with healthy skepticism and you’ll find that literally everything you post will not go unquestioned in some way. Reddit develops your ability to defend every last opinion you have, all while being part of the best conversations on the web. Yes, the comment sections of most posts are absolute gold. The more you dive into them, the more you’ll find yourself clutching your tummy in pain from laughing too much.

Atheist subreddits worth checking out are:

r/atheism r/atheismrebooted r/atheistparents r/TheFacebookDelusion/ r/skeptic r/DebateAnAtheist

For a much, much longer list visit this link.

There is an absolutely monstrous amount of incredibly great atheist content, current events and great conversation in these subreddits. Before you start posting however, be sure to read the Reddiquette guidelines and the posting rules for each subreddit as they are defended quite ferociously. Some of their rules are pretty idiotic, like the self-promotion rules, but the greatest thing about Reddit is that when enough people pipe up, even about the site rules, things actually change and adapt.

Here are some of my favourite Reddit posts:

1. I am Richard Dawkins, scientist, researcher, author of 12 books, mostly about evolution, plus The God Delusion. AMA

2. We Are Richard Dawkins & Lawrence Krauss – Subjects of the new film The Unbelievers. Ask Us Anything!

3. I am Neil deGrasse Tyson AMA about the new Cosmos TV series

4. Hello, I am Ricky Gervais. Ask Me Anything.

5. Please don’t ask me how I managed to take this picture…

6. Today you… tomorrow me

7. Which famous person needs to come out already?

Reddit is best experienced with the Reddit Enhancement suite plugin for Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari. It allows you to expand photo, text and video posts without leaving the main subreddit page. Plus, there are a ton of other useful features that improve the overall Reddit experience.

Be forewarned, however, that once you get into Reddit, sometimes it is extremely difficult to stop. Especially if you get suckered into subreddits like /r/AdviceAnimals and /r/pics and /r/Videos as these are where internet content starts to go viral. Spend some time there and you’ll find that eventually, you’ve seen everything going viral on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere because it almost always starts on Reddit.

Do you use Reddit? What are some of your favourite posts? Let me know in the comments.

#reddit