What is Reddit?

For much of the internet, Reddit is the gateway to everything interesting going on in the world.

Checking Reddit.com is like reading the daily newspaper, except that Reddit is timely, interactive, personalized, participatory, horrifyingly absorbing at times, and basically good.

The way it works is that people submit links to Reddit, blog posts or images or videos, and other people vote those links up or down.

It's a simple idea but it makes Reddit into a list of the best stuff that people are reading or watching on the internet right now.

The name is a contraction of Reddit as in I already Reddit on Reddit, which if you spend significant time on the site is what you'll say to everyone who tries to show you anything.

It's a kind of awesome curse. Because there are no editors on Reddit, you never know what you're going to find who tries to show you anything. It's a kind of awesome curse.

Because there are no editors on Reddit, you never know what you're going to find,

but you can bet it's going to be funny or interesting or enraging because thousands of other people

have already voted that it's something to see. Think of it this way. If Google is where you go

to search for things, then Reddit is where you go to see the things that people have found.

But Reddit is not just one list of stuff, Reddit is a beautiful fractal with sections

called subredits.

If you like just politics or programming or funny image captions or sports or world news, there

are subredits that list only that stuff.

And there's going to be a subreddit for your city or country or region.

Love a TV show that ended years ago, there's a subreddit where people are still talking about it as though it just aired.

Tech geeks have their technology and flaggeeks their vexilology, and on the off chance you're interested in something that doesn't yet exist,

just press a button and a new subreddit is born.

And each subreddit works just like the main page, a constantly updating list of interesting stuff, according to the people interested in that stuff.

And when a subreddit grows large, it can be terrifyingly good at this.

For example, A section devoted to adorableness is a global 24-hour-a-day battle to find the cutest images ever.

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