So there's a streamer I watch who has Cbat in his playlist because of the meme and I've started associating the song with him, so remembering the origins was like a sucker punch.

glad im not the only one who noticed 💀

it's like a mosquito fart 😭

I thought that was an airhorn lol

I can hear the song in my brain lol

too seated 😭😭

same

They don't understand the gravity of this video.

I so wish I could rent out a little theater for watching youtube vids

@@aileenmorgan8276 I mean... you can, its just costs a lot lol

yes! i was thinking of this one! ive also seen “trans person gets mad at someone else for having their deadname” but idk if thats as much of a category in itself

I've seen the latter post word for word before lmao

​@@Elena-vx8pu I've seen some of these online and are such obvious bigoted rage-bait if you know any trans people IRL.

Hahaha I actually did that irl, took the same name as one of my cousin's kids. But like, it's a nice name and if she didn't want me to steal it she should have learned to talk earlier.

You know what's crazy? Just yesterday I saw a podcast on KZfaq where some woman (she showed her face) was angry about her trans sister & the "trans agenda". One of the points she made was that she's angry that the trans sister named her daughter with the same name as her sibling

in my experience asexual people tend to be extremely kinky, so i find it odd

Oh yeah, those are especially fun because, most of the time, both the poster and the commenters clearly know little to nothing about asexuality or asexual people.

@@sushiroll3795 Yeah, for some people it's a foreign concept that a lot of asexuals do enjoy sex for example, since it's lack of attraction to gender rather than lack of libido/voluntary celibacy

It's a lack of physical attraction to any gender. I tend to explain it like say you see a really pretty flower, you think "wow, that's a pretty flower" But you aren't compelled to have sex with the flower. I think of people the same way people think about flowers. I can appreciate their beauty but that's as far as that goes.

@@SerenityBugify I'm just gonna put these tulips down...

Plus: the infidelity stories on heterosexual relationships when the woman is the one doing the cheating is more of an opportunity for men to "get it all out" if you know what I mean.

reminds me of all those fake tumblr posts (like the down with cis bus) that were actually made by this one guy on reddit.

I think bc of that, offshoots like r/AmITheDevil(Crosspost sub for posts where the person writing it/the persona in the story is the obvious asshole regardless of judgement in the inital sub) seem to target posts that obviously try to frame a marginalized person as the unreasonable person or call posts bait more frequently since AITA apparently gets pretty militant with how some comments are phrased.

​@@mariedit9935 this. Despite the fact that men statically cheat more

I how Can a baby be the asshole 😭 it’s baby??? These people need to write better

The majority of infamous Tumblr fake stories were made up by reddit

It'd be a good collab topic w/ Strange Aeons

Omg! Really? Always thought it was a tumblr originalb

@@summerchild_ yep! Sarah Z has a pretty good video talking about the history, search for the original post and realization it was never a real post but that's why if you've ever seen it in the wild it only exists as screenshots

@summerchild_ there are a lot of iconic tumblr posts that upon further inspection were just made up by people on reddit trying to find excuses to hate anyone who wasn’t a skinny cishet male. In the video rachalt mentioned one of the people who made one of those aforementioned posts ran away scared after being confronted lol

Thank you so much for writing this out I am obsessed

not to nickpick, but um actually Sue and Johnny are different ages and Johnny is always depicted as younger than everyone else! He's been as young as 18ish and attending college, at least when they first debuted! love the way you wrote this tho!

nta your trip your rules

​@@deaf-tomcat Yeah, Johnny and Peter met in college if I'm not mistaken, and both already had superhero identities by then.

OPITA, you should’ve checked the ship for any way you could’ve been exposed to weird cosmic radiation before stealing it, and you should’ve swapped bodies with your friend, you’re clearly just being selfish about keeping cool powers

Yeah often people would side with the poster even when irl most of us would think the other side is the reasonable one. I used to think it's mostly benign misunderstanding but I don't anymore, I think those type of post highlight people secret hate. It actually is a pretty interesting tool to see what people secretly hate. I knew there's a ton of trans hate before Reddit off course, but I didn't realise how much hate there is around relatively benign things like pronouns (as is your example) or dating people who aren't lgbtq+ (mostly "trans person calls me racist because I don't want to date them". There are a ton of those on Reddit, irl this probably never happened) It's a hateful place

After a while you learn that any post in a popular sub is going to be transphobic ragebait and/or will be filled by the most bigoted comments. Hell, anything outside of a trans-centric sub is sure to be like that, even other lgb subs And every few months there is a shit ton of infighting inside of trans subs! The whole site is a mess, i just stay there for the sims 2 sub

​@@mauroc1896 You captured the reddit™ experience so well lmao. It sucks balls.

@@mauroc1896 yeah, communities online tend to implode, especially as there's a lot of very real pressure coming from other Reddit subs and the world outside. It's really ashame, especially for teens and adults who don't live in cities that desperately need some community. Oh well at least there's cat Reddit - r/illegallysmolcats never disappoints

​@@mauroc1896btw you probably shouldn't be leaving off the T in the acronym because that is literally one of the things people that are transphobic do.

was expecting her to slide "portugal" in the list

GEW AAAAAAHM​@@bronzergoth7598

that went SO HARD too

44:09

We can now finally confirm that Li is a Warner sibling.

Oh my goodness YES, my friend in high school and I would watch Indian and Turkish soaps and the evil MIL is a gold standard!!!!!

I, 19F live in Pakistan with my in-laws. My MIL (45F) gets mad at me for not cleaning or doing enough house chores even though I cook every single meal and clean the entire house every single day. She also makes a point to get mad at me in front of my husband (27M) who then gets mad at me without even hearing me out. His second wife (21F) hates my guts and wants me dead. She gave me a cup of tea that when I sipped it, made me woozy and I woke up in a hospital bed and my MIL yelled at me for 20 months about the hospital bills. My FIL (55M) goes along with everything my MIL says. My only friend betrayed me by getting with the guy I actually wanted to marry (This marriage i’m in currently is arranged), and my mother and sisters don’t know anything because I don’t want to tell them anything because they’ll worry. I don’t talk back to anyone, I do what everyone in the house asks me to do, but I cry myself to sleep every night and somehow still wake up with shimmery orange eye makeup and glossy lips. AITA? What do I do? :,(

@@sta._rinaBRUH LMAOOO

@@sta._rina LMAO

LOL

I do belive support animals exist but theyre usually therapy dogs of some kind and I think still need some sort of paper proof?

Emotional support animals are a thing in some places - in the US, an ESA can't legally be denied in non-pet rented housing, but they are absolutely not allowed in non-pet friendly stores or other public places, for example. They're not a thing in the UK, though, and thus ends my knowledge of the legal status of ESAs around the world

Unfortunately that's one I do frequently see in real life. I cannot tell you how often people advise others to lie about an animal being an ESA. It's so frustrating because it makes things so much harder for people who actually need service animals and ESAs. And yes, as the other commenter said, ESAs are a legal thing in the US. It allows people to keep an animal that provides emotional comfort for things like depression and anxiety even in housing units that don't normally allow pets, and potentially get a pet deposit waived (however it must be considered as reasonable, so if the animal causes damage, disturbs others, or causes logistical issues, the person may still be told no or be asked to remove the animal). It requires documentation from someone like a doctor or therapist and (as far as I am aware) only applies to housing. ESAs are not considered service animals and are still not allowed in places that do not allow pets. Also in the US the only animals that can be considered service animals are dogs and, in some states, miniature horses. An ESA can be any animal.

Reddit has a serious hateboner for ESAs in particular. I'd call "disruptive ESA" posts Type 2 because they're almost always told from the perspective of the complainer and the owner of the animal is voted the a-hole. Usually cartoonish BS, but the tamer ones could be real.

As someone who worked in retail for a few years (thank God that I'm out), I've never seen a well-behaved ESA and only seen entitled people who brought in untrained dog(s)

It's giving Brian David Gilbert when he was still at polygon

“wanna cyber” tanktop had me audibly laughing until i cried. I NEEED ONE

Absolutely inspirational costuming. It felt like a little treat for actually watching the video instead of leaving it on in the background.

the only things missing are a little lecturer's stand and a bottle of water that they're sipping from for the span of 2 hours

@@vogelvrouw or that one woman on TikTok who sang "what a wonderful world" one letter at a time.

Me neither but its pure art

@@frauleinfunf "And now, the Trigger Warnings of Reddit, brought to you by Yakko Warner."

That was the best part lol

Yeah the only time I think it's reasonable to do the substitute thing is when you'll have to repeat the word very often because of the type of video it is and even then it can often be avoided

It works well for some videos, though I've had a lot of videos where I am only listening and it's extremely difficult to figure out the different words being thrown out when they're only ever censored. It's mostly detrimental when directly quoting a lot of info from people who didn't give context clues since they just said the words directly. Those times, I do appreciate some sort of substitute. Explaining a simple acronym or abbreviation before using them is something I've enjoyed in videos like that.

do people actually censor like that outside of tiktok?

​@@homosexula5595 the systematic replacement using the word "unalive" is so widespread it's becoming a normal part of children's lexicons. listen to any podcast that also gets released on youtube, which is a lot of them these days.

@@linkin2363yep it evolved from being a way to censor specific to the internet. To just a new word used by teens and young adults.

i was wondering what the fuck that meant

😂 I haven’t seen that one. I’ll have to look for it.

Agree with the sentiment but i think this is more a general social media problem. Twitter and tumblr have their fair share of hate bandwagons to account for as well. Also a lot of this 2010s culture war/ragebait stuff was pushed further by Russian bots trying to create a divide in the American public. I don't think half of those right wing grifters would have said those things, if they hadn't been radicalized by that self same rhetoric, but im probably giving them too much credit.

The gay or neurodivergent or leftist writers are generally encouraged to write fanfiction and the conservative writers had no equivalent until Reddit stories came in vogue except maybe 4chan greentexts

It literally always goes back to 4chan/8chan/8kun/whatever silly new name they're calling themselves in order to scurry away from the spotlight and back under the rock they came from. Really at it's core it's a subset of some of the most bitter, sad, dejected losers on the planet coming together to sow whatever negativity they can because it's the only thing they have left to feel anything.

@@psyivy9169 true

This vastly overestimate the organisational capabilities of the users on those sites, who are often too busy (figuratively) cannibalising each other with infighting to get themselves involved in even targeted operations against one person, never mind entire social media sites. It's very easy for people's social media peers to exploit their gullibility and propensity for e-rage just for the sake of "doing a little trolling" on an individual basis.

comparing ragebait stories to grimm fairy tales omggg 😭😭

Because that is exactly what this is! Culture is still alive and evolving, history is happening right now. We witness the creation of Li's Rage Tales.

I mean, folklorists have made detailed trope taxonomies for fairy tales just like what Li did for Reddit stories.

this is such a great way to describe it

That sounds *hilarious*, and if youre willing to either share it or retell any more details I'd be delighted

@@guggelguggel7491 the story itself was rather generic, but the way OP described being an adult and danced around the "fictional story" sort of tipped people in the comments off and when pushed they admitted they lied about that but the rest was real. pressed further and they revealed the fictional character they were fighting about was "dream from the dream smp". i think the funniest part is that this was clearly a 13 year old looking for a judgement call about their actions but still had some awareness to know that fighting over a minecraft server was ridiculous.

Oh my god, sauce ?

I haven’t heard about the dream smp in so long…

41:55 I think I know an example of that one, but I can't put both my broken arms on it Or on my peblis

that running gag was 100% inspired by that photo.

LEAVE THE BABIES OUT OF THIS, TED

probably oversaturation of soap operas on the market lol it's like the easiest fiction to write, except maybe something directed at children

I've heard so much of this real irl and on potentially ragebait posts. I remember one where the christian in-laws of a jewish kosher man secretly fed him, and his kosher children, pork, and the wife was making excuses for the parents

Number 2 kinda reminded me of a story on Reddit where a woman puts coconut product in the child's hair after they been constantly told by the mother that the child was deathly allergic to coconut.

@@asapling OMGG YES. that was so awful!!!

To be honest, as a person of arab descent, amount of times I was "tricked" into eating pork makes me believe these stories ain't fake. Or at least some of them aren't.

can't forget putting something someone would likely not want to eat (ex: laxatives, painfully spicy, sedative, thc, etc) in food that keeps being stolen, usually in a work setting or shared living space.

words that have never been uttered in this order ever before

Its cbat 😭😭😭

@@number420dadI KNEW IT

Oh god yeah it got even worse when Chat GPT entered the picture

But why? isn't the fun in rage bait is tricking others? If a robot does the work for you then it kinda takes away the reason to do it in the first place

@@seraphim108 probably for algorithm reasons idk

There’s r/AmITheAngel.

The crazy thing is as an orphan who actually has tried to share their story, I feel like I’ve never gotten attention when reaching out for help over fake stories. And they’re so obviously fake too. Like they don’t know if you ask them questions about it or answer super vaguely and people eat it up anyway. It’s really frustrating especially when I was trying to find scholarships, or when I wanted to know other peoples coping mechanisms/ways to adjust to different homes and there were dozens of dozens of spam fake sad/happy orphan stories and only some real ones 🫥 Like it’s not even the big subreddits it even leaks into places where you’re actually looking for resources!

@@thegoodwitchluzura i LOVE that place. truly a gift to earth

Yes! Nosleep is great because we know it's fake but we pretend it isn't and it works.

Jill Rodrigues’s selfie with the parents of the deceased children at a funeral that she wasn’t even invited to in the first place comes to mind

"INFO. If your father specifically asked for that in his will, then you're a caring child for honoring his wishes. Also he sounds like he was a great guy and I love his sense of humor." OR "If it was anything other than the TikTok explosive fart noise then YTA."

I was halfway in until I noticed the 'SampleOP' 😭

or at least they used to, infinity hours ago.

Oh yo, i actually know SampleOP irl, thats my buddy eric

@@donutholebandit6212 Everything's always coming up Eric.

You are reminding me of my all time fave post: AITA for cutting my step daughter's hair against her will because I don't want her to be vain and having short hair will free up more of her time for doing chores?

Some posts are def fake but there’s def some that are real and the real ones are a spectrum. Saw one earlier where a woman talked about smacking a random child across the face cuz he was trying to take off her bikini top and her AITA question was about her husband saying she kinda overreacted

AITA is either the most mundane non-issue or a reason to call 911, no in-between.

@@PaizuruInsanaland the 911 one is written with the tone and casualness of a mundane one (AITA was i overreacting for not wanting to talk to a mutual friend after they slightly murdered my whole family?) and the mundane one is written with like a whole villain plot line and drama

@@julieblair7472I remember this one. I was torn between believing them or not. Because my mom used to cut my hair against my will because I have African type hair (we’re both African but we’re North African so our hair can vary) and she didn’t want to deal with it.

it's all misogyny! reddit loves to shit on women for any minute reason

That's not a pattern I have observed. I'd guess it makes sense, since motherhood is one of the most meaningful and emotionally charged concepts we know.

@@carlpanzram7081 it's a pattern a lot of women have observed. it also makes sense because reddit is rife with sexism so women are always critiqued more and in harsher ways than men

@@carlpanzram7081 I used to be very active in a subreddit that discussed exactly the theme of this video, it was a pattern we saw a lot

In general, if the villain is a woman, she is going to be venomously despised, and if the villain is a man, he'll be given devil advocates, "we don't know both sides", white knights, and other sympathies. Reddit will say that women are treated better in society but will turn around and say the most vitriolic things torwards women in general

OMG your story is totally fake. Everybody knows it has to be out-of-focus footage of Minecraft parkour in the background.

I would love to see that essay adapted into a video essay

i wanna see that essay now

Dropping a comment here in case u wanna share the essay cause I wanna read it

i wanma see that essay!!

drop the essay babe I would love to read that

Ditto

Same I love categories SO MUCH but I’ve never seen this channel before so… I’m maybe irrelevant

Love ur videos

Omg tama, i literally came to this video right after watching your pokemon colosseum video! Thanks for great listening material while i play pokemon!!

She went feral

I did the opposite... fell asleep half way thru

AITA for tricking my entire school into shaving their heads because they all just made a pastime out of hating me for whatever reason?

AITA for leaving my abusive aunts without telling them to live inside a giant peach

@@alicethemad1613 EDIT: Ok yeah the peach ran them over but

I've once seen an AITA where OP spent a holiday in a creepy village and then yelled at his uncle when he learned his great-grandma was from this village because what if OP "becomes like them". I repeat, someone deadass posted "The Shadow over Innsmouth" to reddit as a true story.

i remember that one! i didn't know it was a book plot. people really seemed to believe that one

Thank god homophobic family members don't exist in real life

My mother (57F) almost caused a car crash because I (31NB) recently came out as genderfluid A few weeks ago, my mother said I'll always be her daughter, and in a moment of bravery, I told her that actually, sometimes I'm her daughter, sometimes her son and sometimes something in between. My mother accepted this, and fast forward to yesterday My mom calls me while my sister was driving her, and my mom asks if, instead of calling me her daughter, she should just call me her offspring. My sister, taken off-guard, laughed so hard she almost lost control of the vehicle and had to pull off to the side of the road. AITA?

​@@AllegedlyHumanabsolutely love the baity title. very accurate, perfectly captured reddit. 10/10

@@_bibi_s haha, thank you!

Hard agree, RPG stuff deserves its own category.

That "crazy DM" with the 40 rules that included unreasonable rules like "don't show up too wasted to play" and "don't constantly mock me in our own game" comes to mind lol

@@Stellafera I mean both sound pretty reasonable to me, honestly.

The RPG horror story subs surely have way more real stories than AITA. I've seen them play out in real life over and over and over.

​@@AliceLoverdrive they were being sarcastic, hence the quotes on "crazy dm"

no I hate them

As an autistic who has the most support needs in my food sensory issues the last one you mentioned always is most upsetting to me. People are so ableist and have the weirdest cultural obsession with eating food = polite and turning down food = impolite. It has ruined relationships for me.

tbh lots of these categories are often (or most of the time) genuine and not bait, but are also common subjects of ragebait posts. its harder to tell with those unless theyre written badly

yeah some of them are definitely real, but it's kind of easy to spot the fake ones. i can't explain it but there's always one point where i get to like, "this one is definitely a creative writing exercise"

Well thats how it goes. The bait part is that they start with a situation people can relate to and are real, to get people to bite. But then it turns into to something so ridiculous

I've genuinely never known a single person to have bad relations with their in-laws. I've only known some reasonable disagreements like "you shouldn't marry someone who doesn't have a stable job yet because they might find a job that's far away". So either everyone I know is unnaturally chill about their child's choice of partner or people on the internet exaggerate a LOT (obviously the latter).

​@@theshire9173 the partner of my boyfriends mom (kinda his stepfather, but the mom is not married to him and my boyfriend doesn't want to call him anything involving the word "father") is a serious asshole like absolutely unreasonable despicable human trash, I expect some trouble coming in our way when we get married or decide to have kids or anything where you normally involve your family to some degree. He definitely is a person that is reddit-ragebait-post-worthy.

The top 200 subreddits are modded by the same, like, 3 mods. They're obviously tyrants; they don't have any reason to be nice to you, peasant. It has turned Reddit into an echo-chamber where you aren't allowed to wrong-think and you sure as he'll better not point it out nor complain about it. I realized how terrible it's become after the whole Aimee Challengor fiasco. (Where people were getting banned for mentioning Challengor's father's being arrested for keeping a 7 year old girl tied up in his house, doing all the terrible things you imagine, WHILE HE WAS CHALLENGOR'S CAMPAIGN MANAGER. Yes, Aimee was living in the home at the time and no, Aimee did not tell anyone. About anything.) It was a whole thing.

Yeah man what kind of a psycho voluntarily polices anything for free

I just made a comment about the pop pysch thing too! BPD, borderline, psychopath, sociopath... People will throw any term around to paint a villian.

@@TenApplesforTime Just a heads up -- BPD is Borderline Personality Disorder, Bipolar is usually abbreviated as BP1 or BP2.

same here, ragebait like this makes me so paranoid doing anything in public. and another thank you to li, this was an entertaining watch

Unrelated to the discussion, but nice Juan Carlos PFP!

Buen intento Juan Carlos Bodoque, pero todos sabemos de tus deudas y adicción por las apuestas han sido base de destrucción a tus relaciones... eres el culohueco (YTA) BUENO YA MAS EN SERIO, pero pienso lo mismo. Tu comentario es muy elocuente así que gracias

After this video I think I know one. Me and and my best friend first bonded over raging about how shitty life is, and questioning our gender. When I called them a feminist because they'd agreed me, but they answered a strong no, and when I asked why they just said they've seen enought to not to want to be associated with them. Years later I said I might be non-binary they were like "oh that's completely okay", then ranted about people being mad that some lesbians feel insulted being labeled queer (which I now know was a popular terf talking point). When I came out as trans masc they said they're totally supportive, but over the years have talked really negatively about non-passing transes and how the hormones affect the body. And they often rage just in general about horrible things they've heard people do. I feel like they're the type to fall into every hate train and bait (not that I'm judging, I'm extremely naive), and partly because of that fell down into an alt-right rabbithole. Even if ignoring the alt-right pipeline, it's just very tiring to be with someone who's now-a-days always so angry, ranting for hours about stuff that has little if any bearing on their life, and yet they react like somebody shat in their mouth and slapped them while calling their dad a racist.

@@NukkuiskoHyvinVaiPois Omg I pity them. Having all that dumb shit living in your head rent free must be so exhausting. For me, emotions are like muscles; they get tired from overuse. I used to be a huge worry wart when I was younger, but I burnt myself out so I don't worry that much anymore. That person needs a hobby besides reading outrageous stories.

I do tend to err on treating certain stories as true, at least if I choose to comment on them, mainly stories of abuse. Because if there's even the slightest chance the person is a real victim, I want them to know their situation is not their fault and they need to get out. As an abuse victim myself, I know the mental gymnastics one can perform to justify the things happening, and how hard it is to break that mindset. Even if it's probably fake, I just don't want to risk dismissing a real victim who needs help.

​@@bishielurfer yeah, I usually treat it like r/nosleep. it's probably fiction, but you respond as if it were real. just in case

​@@hyperturbotechnomike your in laws sound very sweet! IT's SO TRUE the way these stories often have the most bizarrely specific details memorized. Sometimes whole dialogue exchanges lol. like i only started paying attention to "dialogue" when i became a writer and started writing down speech patterns and stuff, but that's not really something most people pay attention to. most people would paraphrase. and yeah, I'm basing my experience off of my own turbulent teen years of going on reddit for help about my abusive mom. i'd read all those posts with supportive and thoughtful comments and assumed I'd also get help. Instead, I got mostly people confused, telling me that she loved me so just have faith (lol), or no feedback at all because I was much less coherent compared to the perfectly curated, top upvoted posts. Like how you can't see a relationship clearly until you've gotten some distance from it, people have a hard time explaining an issue when they're in distress. Now, if I'd used all the tropey reddit terminology like "flying monkeys" or armchair "narcissism" or what have you, I'd have probably gotten more support, but at the loss of the nuance/honesty of what I was trying to say. Cliches and tropes have a tendency to be reductive, especially since they often make it easier to delineate between "villains" and "heroes." My mom isn't a "villain," she does indeed love me, but her actions hurt me, so treating her like an unfeeling villain erases the nuance of abuse, like how it's often perpetrated by the people who "love" us. Also I HATE the way therapy speak has leaked out into the general public from places like reddit fake stories because of the way people use it without really understanding the nuances of psychology, and then support their own ignorance with FAKE stories UGHHHHH In effect, it means people don't recognize abuse in their own lives and can only recognize it if it comes in easy to digest forms. just like how nobody managed to see the issue with my mom on my teenaged post. it's an unending cycle for REAL

I usually instantly realize a post is most likely fake if it's too detailed. While you can embellish to make the story better even if the contents are true, I'd say it's pretty hard to describe something that has happened to you with a "book passage" level of detail if it makes sense, with elaborate dialogue, careful description of one's behavior like their body language, etc

This is a really good point, about how well the things are written. I had to actively remove myself from several subs bc they would upset me so much, I would be weeping while trying to explain to people to get out of abusive situations bc I could see my own naive past self in them, (and even though I’m not familiar with it directly the animal stuff really _really_ upsets me, so it’s a huge relief to know some of those are probably fake bc I have been really heartbroken over those). I have such a hard time accepting my own memories of abuse sometimes bc it would require malicious intent and evil I just can’t comprehend. I still struggle with this bc it feels so implausible. I dunno man it seems pretty shitty to me that certain folks don’t care to just co-opt what they remember hearing from real survivors to get fake attention, but in turn suck up real energy and time. God the internet really is like, the best and the worst of us just getting neutralized into nothingness Reality is so much murkier and meandering. You’ll realize 10 years later that seemingly innocuous things at the time were actually clear proof of coercive control, but you rarely have razor sharp well formed timelines of events. Also, things usually don’t turn out with the hero getting vindication. Just desserts, Justice, or things working out eventually seem to be the most hard to believe element of a lot of these stories. A victim of CSA and domestic violence that marries an abuser she met at 16 who lies to get the kids when she finally leaves him bc that was his threat that kept her there will just go on to have multiple abusive relationships (including one who vindictively helps secure the ex’s hold over her kids bc that was _his_ threat when she’d try to leave _him_ ) is likely to find herself in one screwed up situation after another and maybe she will get therapy, figure out her disorders, and be less obviously distraught all the time but she’s sure as shit not going to be rich and perfect and unscarred by everything. She’s sure as shit not going to have the relationship she wanted with her kids. Stuff takes a toll, it’s subtle and often you blame yourself, you don’t just jump out and pwn your abusers by 28 years old and make everyone regret what they did/apologize/look like the jerks they are. You don’t realize before it’s too late that you should get advice or even have the clarity to know you need it, or the advice will be that you’re breaking your family up for “no reason.” An abuser isn’t going to even think to consult Reddit for a judgement on whether they’re doing the right thing. They either are delusional and think they’re right, or they know they’re wrong but they’d never openly admit as to what the reality was. A gaslighter isn’t going to admit the truth to anyone, and an asshole doesn’t remember a passing interaction with a stranger and wonder if they were right. Assholes live longer. Rich people think they earned what they have, and most perpetrators of abuse will never even think twice about the harm they caused,and their lives will probably be easier than those of their victims. BUMMERS GONNA BE A BUMMER I RECKON *crabwalks out Edited bc I, too, am not only verbose as hell but also illiterate

Yeah, I find that once you get into them everything suddenly looks like a sign, easy to see from the outermost clime

Ahhh that brings me back

Crazy how Tally Hall invented colored ties

This exactly! One weeaboo decides to name their son Goku, and all of the sudden, everyone on Reddit is dogpiling on them.

And most of the time it's just... a name. A name that 'muricans don't encounter often, but still, just a name.

I just have to believe that the post where a couple named their twins Aziraphale and Crowley is real just because it is SO FUCKING FUNNY AAA

And who can forget the classic "Partner named our child after an ex, without informing me at the time".

​@@AliceLoverdrivethe funniest thing to me is when the "ridiculous name" is literally just French

This reminds me of a tumblr blog that's called "aita-blorbos" which is basically what you described, fictional characters posting to aita (how it's set up is that people submit posts and the person running the blog will post it, so you still get quite a bit of variety for media).

OOOOO ​@@Mizu_Melon

there's actually a real subreddit where people post in character as their sims, i think it's called r/aitasims, it's hilarious

Oh actually!! r/FictionalAITA already exists and it's a blast I tell you Perfect for those "I [23M] had an argument about politics with my brother-teacher-dad [38M] over an active volcano and now my pregnant wife [28F] is dead AITA?" posts lmao

@@Mizu_Melon I WAS ABOUT TO SAY THE SAME THING

Omg same. Ive also seen people in some writing servers Im in use it as a writing exercise, both fandom fave characters as well as for their OCs.

and then it throws you off. see the sims examplies cited in this video. see also Stardew Valley or Skyrim where you have to do a double take.

I one time did this for raskolnikov from crime and punishment, posted it on the actual AITA, and got banned for a week

I love AITA’s description as “for the moral philosopher in all of us” because I think that’s exactly what these fake stories are all about. They’re basically thought experiments being set up by OP so that people can debate about them in the comments. I know I’m personally addicted to these types of posts because I’m not very adept at social dilemmas, so these role plays are like places for me to see analyses on what the acceptable course of action is. Unfortunately, it’s a bit like the blind leading the blind, so Reddit not the most optimal place to learn social cues/behavior lol 😂 I think the funniest part about Reddit stories is that, as you’ve said, it takes a certain type of person to post their real life on Reddit, so it’s always funny when the writer forgets that and has some crotchety 65 year old man who doesn’t know what a forum is ask stuff on r/relationships or AITA. Like, we’re gonna have to suspend some disbelief here and pretend that this old guy would know how to navigate AITA or r/relationships’s stringent posting policies. XD

It's why it's a lot easier to discuss AITA and related sub stories as less 'Give every story's credibility the benefit of the doubt' bc some bait is obvious or even word for word summaries of a tv show or book plot and more 'I'm giving my points in relation to this situation as it happens in real life and not bc I believe someone's 70 year old mom went to Reddit to expect random strangers to side with her poor treatment of her daughter in law' I also agree with the other commentor that Reddit isn't the best sample size for human behaviour or how to handle situations, esp with the 'You don't owe anyone anything ever' attitude being so prevalent that's ironically being combated with Tumblr's concept of the human tarpit considering its own prolific history with fake stories that have entertained people and also caused like long reaching harm to perceptions of different people.

i agree with the aita basically being role play. i have seen quite a few aita users say that they know most stories are fake, but enjoy pretending as if they are real for fun

​@@user-kx5en8dg7uif you're not familiar with it, you may like r/nosleep! They're posts about fake horror events or stories, but the point of the subreddit is to interact with posts as if they're real things that happened.

​​@@allyli1718 Interesting. I've always struggled with social skills but I'm also really interested in why people people, so I closely analyzed human behaviour in schools and such for years in an effort to copy it (how do you do fellow hu-men) and apparently ended up teaching myself what nature refused to give me, since I've had multiple mental health professionals claim I have good social skills even if I still feel I don't. I guess that's the old-fashioned way for what you're doing 😄

you could include things like people following keto and other diets too

I saw “make a story up on aita and whoever gets the most likes wins” as a challenge once and someone got several thousand likes and hundreds of comments. People just do it to entertain themselves

"You think someone would just do that? Just go on the internet and tell LIES?"

Same. Like sure logically I know that people can and do lie, I just never assume that's what's going on. I guess I just don't get the thrill of having hundreds of people comment, believe and share you're made-up story, it would feel completely hollow to me because it's fake. It's like pretending to be someone else to get friends

my autistic ass

Same I usually assume it's real because there's no point in them lying. I also find some of the stories interesting.

IKR like thank you for inviting us to your symposium Li! When can we expect the published article? (Only half joking)

Unreasonable living: a ghost is just trying to...die their death?...but the mortals redecorate their place and won't give them any personal space or peace and quiet.

why are reddit people so obsessed with saying every weird thing they see is a native american myth creature and never like... a dracula or something

It's fun to search for mentions of your hometown/childhood hangouts on those subs. Won't get a hit on all of them, but when you do it is funny seeing someone like "Holy shit don't go to [x] in the middle of the night!!! I almost got possessed by a ghost!!!!!!" and it's a place you hung around all the time at night when you were like 12. I grew up in Appalachia so it's especially common for me to see this, I spent plenty of time in the woods at night with friends or family and not been possessed once

love your implication that a skinwalker racially segregates its victims

​@@neondolphin2003 I don't think they mean that these creatures wouldn't attack non-native people. Rather that the "author" uses the name without finding out enough about how said creature is supposed to work, and makes silly mistakes. In an actual fictional story, you can pick and choose traits for your monsters; you should, really, makes it more interesting. But in a fake story that is meant to be read as if it was real, you probably want to find out what is accepted as hard, real-life canon, and use that. Like if someone wrote about a vampire that doesn't have fangs. In a book, fine, in a post, silly.

In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the son came back to beg his father to just let him work among the servants and laborers, just enough to survive. But the father welcomed him as a son and restored him in his house. The son was not entitled in the parable, at that point.

Same omg, usually when I do stuff I use reddit videos for background noise and omg it feels like I never heard a real story out of the thousands 😂

Yes exactly!

So real, I was thinking about Oppa Homeless Style Althroughout this vid XD

lol i left a comment about oppa homeless style too, i think it could be its own thing, a "double fake story," where the story is intentionally written to be obviously fake and the op is pretending to be a member of some group they want to mock. like with oppa homeless style it turned out it was never a real tumblr post it was a completely fake screenshot originating from reddit and was meant to mock tumblr users or sjws or something like that. its sort of "Unreasonable (whatever)" but with an added layer of fakeness

​@@BlisaBLisaYeah, I think it probably should be it's own thing too, considering the taxonomic rank would only apply within the "canon" op invented for that story.

I’ve definitely felt that way, people are very pedantic on there about grammar and spelling and stuff and I feel like that maps on very easily to an “im objectively right” kind of attitude

It depends on where you hang out. If you’re in a subreddit for something like video games (or even just one for just a singular popular game) or one for politics, for example, yeah you’re gonna have a bad time. People are cruel and mean because they want to be. But if you hang out in smaller, niche communities or funny cat subreddits people are pretty chill and nice.

I think this has a few causes, primary being the relative anonymity of reddit. Until recently, it was very much not a site where you would ever use your real name or have a real profile picture. It used to be that you didn't even need an email address to make a reddit account. It's a lot easier to be an a-hole when what you're saying isn't directly linked to you. This feeds into the secondary factor, the founding culture of the site. It was created as an anonymous, barely-moderated message board for people with specific interests. That combination is a breeding ground for strongly held opinions expressed without regard for social graces. Plus, the upvote/downvote/karma system is a social credit scheme that actively rewards people for conforming to a group. There's some cool things about reddit, but the overall site culture unfortunately isn't one of them.

@@GhostsMcGee on forums of the old people didn't attach their real names or real pictures and nobody was nasty, while on facebook people post most vile shit imaginable with their real identities attached, so I don't think it's the anonymity.

That's not a fictional situation tho?

​@@mykaruest3620every fake reddit story takes cues from actual events or else nobody will take the bait. A lifetume original movie is a full on assault of tropes v women, that doesn't mean it's a real story. Every fucki g liar ever has taken a kernal of truth and extrapolated it into a false narrative.

100% they just want stories to fuel their bias

oh no, girl, i was one of those people who believed. granted, i was a teenager, but still. i’d be shocked and horrified and just think “wow, i can’t believe people are LIKE this.” i knew there were fake stories out there, i just didn’t think the ones i read were fake. then one day i saw a video about double fake stories (written intentionally to sound fake in order to dunk on the kind of person who would write that story genuinely), and my whole worldview changed. now i’m a lot faster to read something someone says on line and think “nope, didn’t happen.” but yeah there was a long time where i just didn’t get it 😭 i was very trusting

When you're a middle/high schooler who has no friends, never goes outside, and most important, uses Reddit because you think it's a good & smart idea, it's very easy to believe that most/all of these stories are not only real, but that it means the entire world is full of horrible, awful people living way more *interesting* lives than you, which can be a real 1-2-punch to the self-confidence.

no they absolutely believe them, especially when it confirms their biases on whatever minority theyre about. ppl are very willing to turn off critical thinking to feed their anger at a group they dont like

With how Poe's Law still abides people will believe literally anything if they're sheltered enough or it confirms enough biases and although this is more common with right wing spaces living heavily on hearsay, it is still a common occurence on more progressive spaces as well. There's a lot of people who believed And Everyone Clapped style stories at first or used the Aceggot story to determine how they perceive actual ace people. For a less harmful example of this you can check out a video on the Muppet Joker and how even after their tumblr got linked to the AITA posts made by someone claiming to be the user's uncle, only like three people were calling it bait or faked.

I see you’ve never used twitter.

You could mint a whole bank if you had a dollar for every comment on AITA demonizing a cluster B disorder or having a sentence along the lines of 'I have X disorder/I know someone with it and they *never* act like that so they're lying' sorts of casual ableism.

@@TheSlipperyNUwUdle No, I value my sanity thank you very much

yeah, i was about to make a comment about this! -💥🏺 (did sys with npd)

Agreed. Its sad that ableism against folk with npd is so common that I was genuinely surprised that this video acknowledge that pop cultures view of npd is totally wrong :(

Oh my gosh I loved tux paint!

Often it’s also the other way around. Some people genuinely thing nothing on Reddit is real. there’s a whole subreddit for mocking that called “nothing ever happens” for when people say the most innocuous posts are fake

I should do that

​@@kloa4219what's gonna happen is your story will get a little attention, the mods will remove it and repost with more red meat on an alt account.