I have become fascinated with the roles that social media and popular culture play into family life and relationships. I particularly find it interesting that it has become normalized to overshare information about one’s life online. People who overshare information about their family, children, or partner may be doing it to seek approval for their actions, look for advice, perhaps they may even want to villainize others in the story and embarrass them.
One of the most common websites where these types of posts can be found is Reddit. Reddit is a website where people can find communities of people who are wanting to explore similar hobbies, topics, and passions through discussion forums. The communities, referred to as “subreddits,” revolve around different topics from problematic influencers to people looking for advice. Anonymous users will make a text post under the subreddit of their choosing. These users are referred to as the original poster or OP for short. Other redditors can then vote and comment on the post and other users’ comments.
While there are many subreddits worth discussing, the three I find most fascinating are Relationship Advice, Am I the Asshole (AITA), and Am I the Devil. In these three subreddits, readers can spend hours reading stories about relationships and family life.
Starting with the Relationship Advice subreddit, this is obviously a place where people ask other Reddit users for help with any kind of relationship in their life. Users post their stories about situations that occur in their relationships and allow other people to weigh in on what the OP should do. From an outsider’s perspective, it seems as if the posts on this subreddit can be less polarizing and controversial than posts on other subreddits like Am I the Asshole and Am I the Devil. The relationship advice subreddit contains people who are looking for help, whereas AITA and Am I the Devil create an environment built from judgment and shame.
The Am I the Asshole and Am I the Devil subreddits go hand in hand. The posts on AITA contain stories where users are wondering if they are the problem in a situation. Commenters will determine if the OP is the asshole (abbreviated by YTA) or not the asshole (NTA). In situations where it is extremely obvious the original poster is in the wrong (and is obviously not a good person), other reddit users will repost the AITA story on the Am I the Devil Subreddit.
Subreddits like these have many implications for family life and relationship dynamics. Oversharing on the internet can cause more problems within a relationship. While people can get diverse perspectives on the issues, posting about private matters in a relationship to a forum with hundreds of thousands or sometimes millions of users can make matters worse. Bigger problems come from when partners in the stories find the posts and confront the posters with more anger. While people may just be looking for solutions or advice, readers may often wonder why the original posters decide to avoid the issues in real life and post it on the internet. Instead of using key aspects of relationships–like communication–reddit users trust internet strangers who have little to no context of the relationship to solve problems.
My point is that we are in an era of the internet where oversharing life experiences is a norm. Instead of utilizing resources in person or asking friends in your life for advice, many people jump straight to internet strangers as their moral compass, problem solvers, and therapists. While there can be meaningful advice and solutions on Reddit, it shouldn’t be our first and only source of guidance when navigating human interactions. Subreddits like Am I the Asshole and Am I the Devil create environments of shame and focus on who is good and who is bad or who is right and who is wrong. Oftentimes, this takes away from the nuances of situations. The stories provided on Reddit do not contain all the context of a relationship and details may be fabricated or omitted by the posters in order to lighten their involvement. The unreliability of reddit posters can often shine through in these stories.
I think Reddit stories are entertaining, and as someone who studies families and relationships, I find many of the posts fascinating. Despite this though, I also think that these subreddits can create echo chambers of opinions and draw focus to shame and embarrassment. Some things just don’t need to be shared.