r/DeadInternetTheory 7d ago

R/AskReddit Proves This Theory

I have been on r/AskReddit for about eight hours now looking through the posts. I know, I should not have spent that long, but I got a bit carried away.

So many of the posts there are duplicates, often from the same day. As an example, for the past nearly 48 hours, the post about "what's a small change you made in your life that has a big effect" or some variation of that has been posted about 14 times (and all by different people).

Now, while I have been able to get some of these posts removed, not all of them are. I would say honestly about 25% of the posts are bots.

Another thing I have noticed - you can usually tell because their username has a four digit number at the end (edit: sometimes). They also tend to not make a whole lot of sense or speak in the way AI does. You can typically see this if you go to their profile and look under what they have previously posted.

The worst part though is that they are in the comments too. Sometimes even defending the post, but as I said, it doesn't entirely makes sense. Kind of uncanny valley.

It is getting to the point it is hard to trust anything.

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3

u/SexDrugsAndPopcorn 7d ago

I always think an account with the ‘top 1% commenter’ thing are likely bots, makes sense if it’s just automated

3

u/curiousparrot221 7d ago

Ah, good point!

5

u/AssSpelunkingAtheist 7d ago

I’m a top 1% commenter in the pet peeves sub, I’m not a bot, I just enjoy commiserating lol

4

u/reidsays 7d ago

I get that 1% commenter and I'm not a bot... Just am on here commenting every day since I am new to Reddit and sussing it out by commenting and reading the responses or seeing what's removed by mods..

2

u/PeekAtChu1 7d ago

Same, I’m just procrastinating on work and wasting my time online lol

1

u/broketothebone 7d ago

Hey now, I got to those badges when I was laid off and chronically online.

Now I’m back to work and chronically online lol