Reddit has had an outsized influence on the internet of today.

It took all those niche forums and passionately moderated message boards and concentrated that fragmented energy into one navigable hub. This format helped to mainstream the idea that a single platform could host everything from breaking news and serious advice to pure ridiculousness side by side. For many people, it became the default place to turn to for many different needs. AI may offer a challenge to its premise, but the technology wouldn’t even exist today if it didn’t have the front page of the internet to scrape from.

The quality of what you find varies wildly by subreddit and the whims of random Redditors. Not every community is going to be for every person, and not every opinion is going to be welcomed. Still, if you are willing to filter through the noise, you can find some real gold that really feels like it is worth applying to your life. A little, often enjoyable, effort is necessary.

It’s also important to say that Reddit can be very funny, and this is one of the main things that keeps many dedicated users coming back to it. Plenty of Redditors are sh*tposters extraordinaire, and some of them don’t even know it. The platform has produced many classic, humorous viral posts in its time. In the collage of screenshots that circulate far beyond Reddit itself, you can see how the ethos of the site has seeped into internet culture everywhere.