Hey Steemit. I love this site, and for my first story on it I thought I would write about one of my other favorite sites, Reddit.com. As of 2017, reddit is attracting more than 200 million unique visitors per-month. Join me in exploring what some of the most atypical of those 200 million users are up to. Beware: some of them are very depressing.

1. /r/sanctionedsuicide

Who would have thought there exists a community on reddit where pro-suicide posts and comments are regularly upvoted?
If your morbid curiosity leads you to /r/sanctionedsuicide, you will find a community of people who plan (or at least claim to want) to commit suicide sometime in the future — some sooner than others. Some users even have suicide-countdowns and deadlines, where they publicly announce their plans to end it all.

From the sidebar: “the intended user base will be people who have accepted suicide as their inevitable end from a lifetime of thinking, be it from depression, nihilistic views, or anything else.”

A representative /r/sanctionedsuicide post:
Post title: “I jumped.”

150 feet tall bridge. I drowned. My heart stopped. I wasn’t breathing. Unfortunately I wake up in the hospital.
Just wanted to say that not everyone regrets jumping. I’m going to try something else next time.

2. /r/wallstreetbets

/r/wallstreetbets can best be described as a community of devil-may-care millennials, with little to no investing experience, treating the stock market like a casino and laughing about it.
Every month the moderators post a “YOLO of the month” sticky-thread, where the users can nominate and glorify the most wreckless users in the community. It’s the only money-related subreddit where the losers are celebrated just as much as, if not more than, the winners.

A representative /r/wallstreetbets post:
Post title: “27k student + private loan to get rich or die trying”

Got 27k loan, most student loans, 8k prosper loan. I lost 16k from options
blew up about 6k on partying
have 7k more to get back on feet (need to make it at 23k to breakeven)
Gonna go all in on next trade, thinking to buy USO puts just before the meeting (this Friday)
Here’s the snap of my account
Share your thoughts, should I kill myself or should keep going until I buy a yacht. YOLO

3. /r/theworldisflat

Yes, there actually exists a community on reddit where people believe the earth is flat, and it has almost 2,000 members. I assure you this is not a satirical subreddit. They take their theory very seriously, and enforce a strict content policy: “All posts are required to be either a genuine question or supportive of the flat earth model. Almost everything you will see here goes against mainstream science and cosmology, we are fully aware of this, if you feel the need to come here and remind us of that expect to be banned.”
They claim that the round-earth narrative is one of the grandest hoaxes ever pulled on mankind, and claim to have satisfying rebuttals to all round-Earther objections to their theory.

A representative /r/theworldisflat post:

Post title: “Showerthought: Making Earth a Globe Prevents People from Exploring”

The globe push came during intense seafaring exploration.
By making it a globe, it prevented the masses from even trying to explore further since you know, people have circumnavigated the globe and there is nothing else to explore right?
Essentially, the push to make the Earth a globe stopped people from exploring. What are they hiding on this plane we call Earth? More than likely they are hiding land. They want us to look into space instead of exploring on Earth. In my estimation they are hiding land in the farthest reaches of the north. And honestly, I am not about to say 100% conclusively that this plane is circular.

4. /r/proed

This subreddit is similar to /r/sanctionedsuicide in that it’s essentially a “safe space” for extremely self-destructive behavior. The “ed” in the subreddit name stands for “eating disorders,” and the “pro” gives you an idea of how they feel about them.
/r/proed members put their BMI and weight in their user-flair, right next to their username. The general idea being promoted in the subreddit is becoming unhealthily underweight as soon as possible, and getting skinnier if you’re already there. They share images of underweight people meant to inspire members of the community on what is achievable, give each other meal tips, and encourage each other on their self-destructive paths.

A representative /r/proed post:

Post title: “Your cravings don’t put the fork in your mouth”

You do. There are no cravings, no hormones, no stress, no bad break ups, or falling outs. The only person who decides what you eat is you because you’re the person putting food in your mouth. Your cravings can make you want to eat, but the only way you eat is if you actually decide that you want to eat. You have the final word — not doctors, not parents, not stress, or lack of sleep.
You already know what you need to do.

5. /r/mgtow

“MGTOW” stands for “men going their own way.” The community is basically a bunch of men that feel disenfranchised by the dating scene for one reason or another, and have given up on courting women entirely. To each his own, but it seems the /r/mgtow is less a celebration of the benefits of the MGTOW-lifestyle than it is a polarized anti-woman echo-chamber. Hate to say it, but maybe getting laid would make these guys a little less pessimistic and resentful.

A representative /r/mgtow post:

Post title: “The cycle of female inclusivity”

Step One: We demand you include us in your space.
Step Two: We demand you change your space to accommodate us.
Step Three: We demand you stop harassing us because you don’t like our demands.
Step Four: We demand new laws or rules be enacted to remove “you” from the space “we’ve” created as you don’t fall in line with our vision of what the space should be.
Step Five: Why don’t you go off and create your own space if you don’t like it? :)

6. /r/foreverunwanted

Speaking of not getting laid, this next subreddit epitomizes the “feels of no GF.” /r/foreverunwanted is a community of redditors who claim to be 100% undesirable sexually and romantically. According to their sidebar, you have earned the title of Forever Unwanted if “nobody of your orientation ever wanted to have any romantic or sexual interaction with you. You have never kissed or had sex with anybody, you have never been asked out, everyone rejected you, etc.”
The posts and comments are as tragic as you would expect. It’s essentially a support group for involuntarily-celibate, sexually-frustrated redditors.
Fret not, my friends, sex robots will be here soon.

A representative /r/foreverunwated post:

Post title: “Why do normies act surprised when they realize we aren’t nice?”

Society doesn’t even treats us as humans. Even a dog in the streets gets more empathy than us.

7. /r/nofap

At almost 200k subscribers, this subreddit isn’t exactly fringe. However, I found this subculture sufficiently unique to include on this list. This subreddit is basically a group of redditors that stopped masturbating. They have teams and compete against each other to see who can keep their hands off of their penises and clitorises for the longest. Head on over to /r/NoFap on any given day and the front page will inform you that pretty much all of your problems can be solved with less handsex.
They even have an official browser-plugin, which is an emergency button that you’re meant to press if you can’t keep your hands off of yourself. When pressed, it leads you to motivational videos and images about struggle and perseverance.
Some people say they take masturbation a bit too seriously, but hey, at least they’re trying to better themselves.

A representative /r/nofap post:

Post title: “She was crying”

Last night, I told my wife I had joined an online support group for my PMO addiction. I told her about all you great people and how you encourage each other and share your success stories. She started crying, but it wasn’t tears of sadness. She wasn’t walking away, like she needed to when I first told her about my porn problem. They were tears of joy, and she was walking towards me, to embrace me. She was thanking me. Porn ostracizes you from your loved ones. It separates you. What we do here… it brings you together.

8. /r/debatefascism and /r/debatecommunism

Ever want to debate the logistics and practicalities of fringe political systems? Look no further than /r/debatefascism and /r/debatecommunism. In both of these subreddits, you’ll find countless well-read ideologues that are eager to explain to you why Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Mao weren’t so bad after all. There’s something admirable about people willing to defend such unpopular positions.

A representative /r/debatefascism post:

Post title: “What counter-productive trait exists in your culture?”

I am a schoolteacher in the USA, and I notice our culture really encourages the “Special Snowflake Syndrome”-that a person is so “unique” that they do not have to follow the rules. What have you noticed in yours?

9. /r/antinatalism

The redditors over at /r/antinatalism don’t even know you, but mourn your birth. Antinatalism is the belief that the birth of a human is, all things considered, a pretty shitty thing. Some antinatalists point to reasons like overpopulation and global warming, while others feel that the quality of a regular human’s life simply isn’t high enough to ethically justify subjecting it to 80 years of being alive.

A representative /r/antinatalism post:

Post title: “Smile, Antinatalists.”

Find joy in the fact that you are not contributing to the generational suffering of humanity.
Find peace, knowing that you will never subject a living being to life and death, and everything in between.
Happiness is knowing you will never have to bury your child, and they will never have to bury you.
Knowing they will never be stuck in a soul-crushing 9–5, or find themselves homeless, or battle with cancer.
As an antinatalist, you’ve won. You’ve beaten death, because you’ve chosen not to gamble with life.
That is something to smile about.

10. /r/Tulpas

Have you ever found yourself jealous of scitzophrenics for all of the hallucinated friends that keep them company? /r/Tulpas might be for you.
/r/Tulpas is a community of redditors who try to imagine into existence friends of their own. They call these imaginary friends “tulpas,” and they are meant to have personalities, thoughts, and emotions distinct from the person who imagined them into existence.
Redditors in this community share tips on how to enhance and foster their hallucinations, as well as share experiences they have with their tulpas. Some users even have sex with them, and can interact with other peoples’ tulpas. Anyone down for a Tulpa orgy? ;)

A representative /r/Tulpas post:

Post title: “the worst part about having a tulpa…”

is not being able to tell other people why you are so happy
My tulpa is so sweet and amazing yet I can’t tell other people about how happy I am to have someone so special without them thinking I’m crazy or delusional. It doesn’t bother me too much but sometimes I feel bottled up not being able to tell everyone about how awesome my tulpa is. People who don’t know your secret think you are a loner or anti-social when really you’re having the time of your life with a person they don’t know about. It’s a very weird feeling.

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