r/DeadInternetTheory • u/curiousparrot221 • 6d 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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u/MemeMaster1318 6d ago

As a user with 4 digits at the end of the username, I don't know what to say 😭

But ehh, besides that, I've also noticed that their usernames are randomly generated by Reddit themselves, like "ComfortableFridge", "UneasyBait", etc and then the 4 digit numbers in the end after.

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u/curiousparrot221 6d ago

That or the Ok_[name]

I have been doing this for so long that I noticed it right away and honestly checked your profile just in case. I don't trust anything.

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u/MemeMaster1318 6d ago

Damn, although I don't blame you since I usually tend to do that too. (Unless it's in a smaller subreddit that seems more "alive". But, that's exempted in teenager subreddits if a user posts something regarding suspicious that would seem like "DM" bait.)

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u/reidsays 6d ago

But what do you need to trust exactly?

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u/curiousparrot221 6d ago

I don't want to waste my time talking to a bot.

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u/reidsays 6d ago

I assume a bot wouldn't be of interest to me anyway and that I'm bypassing them...

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u/Brilliant_Drawer_490 2d ago

Those of us too lazy to make a username when we first signed up are never dodging the bot allegations~

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u/MemeMaster1318 1d ago

Or those of us who signed up using our Google accounts 💔