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Whataboutism is an argumentative tactic where a person or group responds to an accusation or difficult question by deflection. Instead of addressing the point made, they counter it with “but what about…?”. For instance, in response to being told off for the state of their room, a child’s whataboutist reply will be to say: “But what about my brother’s room? His is worse.”
The word Whataboutism itself is a modern portmanteau word, formally known as a "tu quoque" fallacy, or the idea that “two wrongs make a right”. This type of diversion is often totally out-of-context and has no limits in terms of time or subject content. For instance, it often begins with a sentence like “What about the time when…” where “the time” and the action can be any period and event so long as the accuser feels it sufficient to completely derail the debate.
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A diversionary tactic is one intended to attract people's attention away from something which you do not want them to think about, know about, or deal with. You’ll find them in any online debate, and Reddit’s favourite techniques come mostly in the form of using logical fallacies, confirmation biases and false equivalences, or simply just accusing the OP of doing the same.
RationalWiki states that False, or Moral Equivalence is a form of equivocation and a fallacy of relevance often used in political debates. It seeks to draw comparisons between different, often unrelated things, to make a point that one is just as bad as the other or just as good as the other.
There’s an incredibly comprehensive alphabetical list of these at Logically Fallacious, but to save you some time I’ve listed a few to look out for here, and plenty more in the See Also section below. Wikipedia also lists some I haven’t mentioned and you’ll often find terms from Therapy Speak used in this way too.
So, here’s a challenge: see how many of these tactics you can spot in any one Reddit debate. Good luck in playing….
Reddit Bingo
DARVO - Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. A tactic used to deflect responsibility onto another individual, often used to discredit an experience. For instance, someone reports their son was bitten by an aggressive puppy. A commenter claims that there is no such thing as an aggressive puppy. That’s the denial. They then go on to attack the OP and blame the son for probably provoking the dog. That’s reversing the victim (son) and the offender (dog).
Gaslighting - Presenting false information with the intent of making the OP doubt themselves or others doubt the OP. Often used in the form of aggressive jabs disguised as jokes so that the accuser can get away with saying something outrageous or even appalling while still maintaining innocence, but at the same time accusing the OP of not having a sense of humour. Closely related to Poe’s Law.
Gish Galloping - Flooding the debate space with an overload of minor, often reworded issues. For example, a person using the Gish Gallop might attempt to support their stance by bringing up, in rapid succession, a large number of vague claims, anecdotal statements, misinterpreted facts, and irrelevant comments.
JAQing Off - Just Asking Questions. Often expressed with one or more of the 🤔 emoji, or the phrase “just saying…” or simply “hmm.” This is a way of attempting to make wild accusations acceptable by framing them as questions rather than statements. Closely related to Gish Galloping, Brandolini's Law and Sealioning.
Moving the Goalposts - This is when, even after you’ve provided all the evidence in the world to validate your argument or taken an action to meet their request, they set up another expectation of you or demand more proof in order to ensure that they have every reason to be perpetually dissatisfied with you.
Pearl-Clutching - This is a deliberate and usually bad-faith reaction to a comment. It is done in order to exaggerate the effects and impacts said comment had. Think of someone in an old movie exclaiming "Well, I never!" The goal is to undermine the OP by accusing them of some form of incivility, when said incivility is typically the least thing of concern in the matter at hand.
Projection - This is a defense mechanism used to displace responsibility of one’s negative behavior and traits by attributing them to someone else. It ultimately acts as a digression that avoids ownership and accountability. For example, someone who bullies another for being anxious and insecure may be doing so to avoid acknowledging they exhibit those same tendencies themselves.
Sealioning - Pestering a target with unsolicited questions delivered with a false air of civility. Like most of the above tactics, this uses non-sequitur questioning as obfuscation, but is also fundamentally different. Sealioning is a constant bad-faith request for evidence or reasoning that's irrelevant, trivial, already presented or easily checked, under the guise of being reasonable with the sole intent of frustrating the opponent into losing their patience or temper, while simultaneously seeking to paint the opponent as unreasonable.
Whataboutism - A common technique used to divert a debate and excuse wrongdoing by accusing someone else of also doing wrong. Another example would be someone who responds to a comment about an attempt to protect women from domestic violence with "What about male victims of domestic violence?".
But wait! There’s hope!
All of these gambits can be countered by using the “broken record” method. This is where you continue stating the facts without giving in to their distractions. Redirect their redirection by saying, “That’s not what I am talking about. Let’s stay focused on the real issue.” Initially, the person may continue with the undesired behaviour or challenging your message, but as you repeat your expectations, your message is reinforced and the person is more likely to comply.
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“Accidents Can Happen” said the great Elvis Costello but even he wasn’t prepared for Accidental Reddit…
Obligatory footnote:
Please do read the rules before contributing to any unfamiliar sub.
This list is not intended to be the full list of subreddits in this theme; that would be impossible to achieve in a format like this.
If you want to find more related subs, r/FindAReddit or the smaller r/findasubreddit are your friends. Similar subreddits are often to be found in a sub’s Sidebar and / or Wiki (“See Community Info” tab on mobile) too. My guide to Searching might also be useful.
But llama; some of these links don’t work…
As always with my lists, some of the subs are more active than others, and since writing some might have become private, restricted or repurposed following the API protests of June 2023, or just removed / renamed by Reddit through inactivity.
However, don’t forget: if a sub is dormant, banned for being unmoderated or marked as “restricted”, it might be available for adoption.
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r/TheseFuckingAccounts is a subreddit to submit and track "suspicious" reddit accounts; ones suspected of being Spambots of whatever variety.
If you intend to post there, do read their rules first, as they require proper evidence of a suspicious account, and ask that you don’t provide detailed information on how to spot bots as they don't want the spammers to know exactly how they find them. Avoid discussing specific bugs or aspects that let them spot spammers.
If you come across a Spambot, do not engage with it. Use the ‘report’ option below the post or in the three-dots Hamburger Menu as Spam --> Harmful Bots and move on. The only reply to a suspected bot you should make is to warn other users by posting the link to r/TheseFuckingAccounts. Replying with anything else might well mark you as an accomplice.
The links below will show you more about what a Spambot is and how to spot one.
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You might have noticed across your Reddit travels that some subreddits have a very different style than others. A feature of Reddit is that every subreddit is its own self-contained site that its Mods can customise however they want with subreddit specific themes. Some have custom vote buttons, others have their own colour schemes, banners, icons, member count text or any combination of the above.
Reddit provide a very useful guide to the community appearance mod tool that shows mods how to customise their subreddits.
r/csshelp has a very useful resource of pre-made themes for customising subreddits.
As part of this customisation, some subreddits have chosen to replace the default voting “arrow” icons with ones of their own which are visible when viewing in Old Reddit, as you can see here. In case it isn’t obvious which is which, the Upvote will be on the top (Old Reddit; desktop) or on the left (Mobile App) and the Downvote will be on the bottom (Old Reddit; desktop) or on the right (Mobile App).
You can opt out of a community's theme if you prefer - on desktop you can find the option in the sidebar near the top, and in new Reddit look under the 'create post' button and click ‘community options’.
Subreddit themes can also look very different according to how it’s viewed; whether it’s the device you are using or the version of Reddit you are using. For instance, r/WoW is the main subreddit dedicated to the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft, and here is how it appears…
As you can see, themes don’t translate very well to the App, especially in Dark Mode.
To set Dark Mode on mobile, tap your avatar on the top right of the screen to go to your profile and tap the settings button at the bottom of the page. This will bring up the Settings menu where you tap on the Dark Mode drop-down menu and select between Night mode or Midnight (AMOLED) which is darker.
Light Mode on mobile actually has four mini themes which change some icon colours and dividers.
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In general, Reddit is anonymous, yet Redditors love to share their personal anecdotes too. Enter the genre of subreddits known as “Tales From…”; places to share your stories about working in various industries or workplaces.
A long list of related subs of varying activity/quality can be found here, where one user even made a Multireddit of 75 communities.
Obligatory footnote:
All of these subreddits will have their own unique - and possibly strict - rules about contributing. As always, it is important to check the rules thoroughly before commenting or posting on any unfamiliar sub.
This list is not intended to be the full list of subreddits in this theme; that would be impossible to achieve in a format like this.
If you want to find more related subs, r/FindAReddit or the smaller r/findasubreddit are your friends. Similar subreddits are often to be found in a sub’s Sidebar and / or Wiki (“See Community Info” tab on mobile) too. My guide to Searching might also be useful.
But llama; some of these links don’t work…
As always with my lists, some of the subs are more active than others, and since writing some might have become private, restricted or repurposed following the API protests of June 2023, or just removed / renamed by Reddit through inactivity.
However, don’t forget: if a sub is dormant, banned for being unmoderated or marked as “restricted”, it might be available for adoption.
See Also:
A time zone is an area which observes a uniform standard time for legal, commercial and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between countries and their subdivisions instead of strictly following longitude, because it is convenient for areas in frequent communication to keep the same time.
For many years, Greenwich Mean Time - known as GMT - was used worldwide as a standard time independent of location. Most time zones were based upon GMT, as an offset of a number of hours (and possibly half or quarter hours) "ahead of GMT" or "behind GMT".
Nowadays, Coordinated Universal Time - known as UTC - is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. Again, it establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. The geographical area it covers remains the same, however and both abbreviations are still in general usage. UTC+00:00 is the basis of Coordinated Universal Time and all other time zones are based off it.
There are some very good time zone calculators to be had online, but they require you to know particular time zone abbreviations. This is where the fun starts, as naming conventions aren’t yet standardised worldwide, and as you’ve seen above, not always even acronyms. Talking of which, you might be wondering why “UTC” is the abbreviation for “Coordinated Universal Time”. According to Space.com, the acronym came about as a compromise between English and French speakers: Coordinated Universal Time would normally be abbreviated as CUT, and the French name, Temps Universel Coordonné, would be TUC.
They refer to this article which goes on to say that the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the International Astronomical Union wished to minimise confusion and designated one single abbreviation for use in all languages. UTC does not favour any particular language. In addition, the advantage of choosing UTC is that it is consistent with the abbreviation for Universal Time, which is UT, with the variations UT0 and UT1. That paragraph was entitled “Avoiding Confusion”. Welp, that clears that up then.
Here’s another fine example. The United Kingdom uses Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), also known as Western European Time (UTC) and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC+00:00), except from March to October every year where we observe Daylight Saving Time (DST) one hour ahead of GMT, where the time zone is known as British Summer Time (BST) or Western European Summer Time (UTC+01:00). In Ireland, the DST time zone is called Irish Standard Time (IST), sometimes also referred to as “Irish Summer Time”. This naturally leads to mistakes as selecting UTC/GMT when using many online calculators and converters for the UK, leading to incorrect results during the summer months when DST is in use.
A list of abbreviations and links to time zone calculators can be found in the Acronyms 3 entry linked below.
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An innocuous phrase that is not quite how it appears. This is another of Reddit’s beloved meta references, often used when making the first post on a new subreddit.
This tradition goes back to 2009 when the first truly popular post on Reddit was made. “Test post please ignore”, was posted in the main subreddit for pictures - r/pics - without a picture. Because Redditors will Reddit, the entire community rallied to reject the OP’s request to ignore the post, and “test post please ignore” became the most upvoted post on Reddit for the next two years with an incredible 26,750 upvotes.
Incidentally, OP was the first Redditor to reach 100,000 karma. It’s now a Reddit Tradition™ not to ignore a post with that title where it’s made appropriately.
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Used in a post title asking for serious responses only. Originally a sub specific label from r/askreddit now with wider Reddit usage. Using this tag will alert the mods to remove funny or joke responses to your post.
It is usually mandatory to put the word between square brackets, but as always if in doubt, check the sub rules first. Some subs have this as a Post Flair to achieve the same effect.
Do not be tempted to make a humorous reply in a post with this flair or request, no matter how tempting or hilarious it would be, as it will be a flagrant breach of the subreddit rules and a legitimate reason for a ban.
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A link posted when a wholesome comment is made by a Redditor with an unwholesome name.
Originating here when the titular u/rimjob_steve commented that they would like to help out a fellow Redditor IRL.
Because this kind of juxtaposition is done far more frequently than you might imagine, the subreddit r/rimjob_steve was created to share any similar instances.
In 2023, it was theorised that the “rimjob_steve effect” might be to blame for a highly controversial change to Reddit’s mobile user interface which removed usernames from subreddit feeds.
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A context-dependent acronym, these three letters have several meanings depending on the subreddit type you are in:
Multi-Level Marketing: On r/antiMLM, r/MLM, r/mlmstories, and similar subs. Increasingly used throughout Reddit.
Man Loves Man: On relationship subreddits.
Mona Lisa Monday: On r/itookapicture (ITAP). A rule on ITAP is that photos with a primary focus on one person staring, looking or thinking without any other interesting action are limited to MLM Mondays (Midnight - Midnight, GMT). Please be sure to read the rules before posting or commenting in any unfamiliar sub.
An Acronym is a word comprised of the first initials of the words in a phrase or saying. They are generally created to shorten long phrases and speed up communication, much like abbreviations and initialisms.
Reddit has a worldwide readership, but because the majority are from the US, you’ll often see abbreviations and other terms that might be unfamiliar to those of us in the rest of the world, so here is my attempt in translating some of the common ones.
US State and Territory Abbreviations
Many animal, reptile or insect identification subreddits will require a location in each submission, so the following list will hopefully help you with the various two-letter US State abbreviations that are often used:
Abbreviation|State :--|:--|:-- AL| Alabama AK| Alaska AZ| Arizona AR| Arkansas AS| American Samoa CA| California CO| Colorado CT| Connecticut DE| Delaware DC| District of Columbia FL| Florida GA| Georgia GU| Guam HI| Hawaii ID| Idaho IL| Illinois IN| Indiana IA| Iowa KS| Kansas KY| Kentucky LA| Louisiana ME| Maine MD| Maryland MA| Massachusetts MI| Michigan MN| Minnesota MS| Mississippi MO| Missouri MT| Montana NE| Nebraska NV| Nevada NH| New Hampshire NJ| New Jersey NM| New Mexico NY| New York (State) NC| North Carolina ND| North Dakota MP| Northern Mariana Islands OH| Ohio OK| Oklahoma OR| Oregon PA| Pennsylvania PR| Puerto Rico RI| Rhode Island SC| South Carolina SD| South Dakota TN| Tennessee TX| Texas TT| Trust Territories UT| Utah VT| Vermont VA| Virginia VI| Virgin Islands WA| Washington (State) WV| West Virginia WI| Wisconsin WY| Wyoming
Notes:
Plant Hardiness Zones
There are some subreddits where abbreviations are used for other types of geographic locations. Many of the gardening and plant identification and help subreddits require a plant hardiness/climate zone on each submission to be able to give proper advice, where you’ll see abbreviations such as “Northern Alberta, Canada 2B/3A” or “PNW - Zone 7B/8A”.
The original and most widely used system was developed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and subsequently, similar hardiness rating schemes have been developed for other countries and regions. To help you understand the abbreviations and/or locate the appropriate zone, here’s a list of resources:
Time Zones
A time zone is an area which observes a uniform standard time for legal, commercial and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between countries and their subdivisions instead of strictly following longitude, because it is convenient for areas in frequent communication to keep the same time. The standard for all time zones is Coordinated Universal Time, known as UTC.
Here’s a list of some of the more commonly used time zone abbreviations, and I’m going to rely on Wikipedia for their respective coverage and definitions as they also have maps of the geographical areas they cover:
There is a much more comprehensive list of Worldwide time zone abbreviations here, and here’s a list of some useful online time zone converters:
School Years
American and British school years have very different measurements, as does much of the rest of the world. I’m going to try to give some of the equivalent terms and age groups below, based on information from https://www.gov.uk/education and https://www.ed.gov/category/subject/standards
Age Group|US Terminology|US Stage|UK Terminology|UK Stage :--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:-- 3 - 4| Preschool| Early Childhood| Nursery |Early Years Foundation Stage 4 - 5| Preschool| |Reception | | 5 - 6| Kindergarten| Lower School| Year 1| Key Stage 1 6 - 7| 1st Grade| |Year 2 | | 7 - 8| 2nd Grade| |Year 3| Key Stage 2 8 - 9| 3rd Grade| |Year 4 | | 9 - 10| 4th Grade| |Year 5 | | 10 - 11| 5th Grade| |Year 6 | | 11 - 12| 6th Grade| Middle School| Year 7| Key Stage 3 12 - 13| 7th Grade| |Year 8 | | 13 - 14| 8th Grade| |Year 9 | | 14 - 15| 9th Grade (Freshman)| High School| Year 10| Key Stage 4 (GCSE) 15 - 16| 10th Grade (Sophomore)| | Year 11| | 16 - 17| 11th Grade (Junior)| | Year 12 (Lower 6th)| A Levels 17 - 18| 12th Grade (Senior)| | Year 13 (Upper 6th)| |
Those of us of a certain age in the UK remember a different system. To make me really feel old, my school years are now regarded as historical.
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Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger crop up in many online situations, and this second list gives some of the more widely used ones throughout Reddit along with explanatory links where applicable. I’ve also included a few frequently used slang words. Some of our specialised communities have a wide acronym and slang language of their own so it might be useful to check and see if they have a Wiki. I’ve listed some more directories in the See Also: section below.
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
W
Y
No doubt you will find acronyms across both Reddit and the internet that I don’t list in this encyclopaedia; the links below may help in this case, and another good place to start is at abbreviations.com, or the very comprehensive Acronym Finder. Explanations and appreciation of word origins can be had at r/etymology.
See Also:
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger crop up in many online situations, with mixed feelings for some. This first list gives an overview of some of the more widely used ones throughout Reddit along with explanatory links where applicable. I’ve also included a few frequently used slang words. Some of our specialised communities have a wide acronym and slang language of their own so it might be useful to check and see if they have a Wiki. I’ve listed some more directories in the See Also: section below.
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
No doubt you will find acronyms across both Reddit and the internet that I don’t list in this encyclopaedia; the links below may help in this case, and another good place to start is at abbreviations.com, or the very comprehensive Acronym Finder. Explanations and appreciation of word origins can be had at r/etymology.
See Also: