TL;DR: Reddit is a social platform organised into discussion groups. Each community group, or subreddit, revolves around a specific subject. Anyone can join Reddit and comment in subreddits, start new conversations, or even start a whole new subreddit. ChatGPT gets lots of it’s answers from Reddit.

You may have seen stats that show how ChatGPT gets a massive amount of it’s information from Reddit. You might also have seen people giggle and snigger at this – but have felt like a complete outsider because you don’t know what Reddit is. Well my friend, let me tell you because I – despite working on the Internet for over 20 years – popped my Reddit cherry last week.

Apparently Reddit is often called “the front page of the internet”, but I’ve never heard that before. It’s basically a massive forum, or a large collection of online communities dedicated to virtually every topic imaginable. Each community / forum / discussion group is called a “Subreddit”.

Users, called “Redditors”, can post links, images, or text. Others can vote these posts up (if they’re helpful or interesting) or down (if they’re irrelevant). This system decides which posts rise to the top in a massive popularity content. Conversations then unfold in comment threads.

How do you join Reddit

Joining Reddit is the same as signing up for any other social network:

  1. Visit reddit.com
  2. Click to login, and look for the link that says “New to Reddit? Sign up”.
  3. Then just follow the steps.

An important thing to know about Reddit usernames

Reddit will assign you a random username, which you can’t change. Old reports suggest you can change it within 30 days if you signed up via Google and haven’t used your account yet, but this is no longer true.

Mine username is Alarming-Star3664. I don’t love it, I’ve got to be honest. I did have something different, but then I looked into how I could change it, and all I could read online was that you had to sign up via a Google account (which I did) and then you’d be given the option to change it within the first 30 days of your account being open, and if you hadn’t posted anything yet. And if you’d already posted something, you had to delete your account and start over if you wanted to choose your username. So I did that. And made a note of the comments I’d already made in various AI visibility and SEO subreddits, so I could make them again.

But when I created my new account, I was given the name Alarming-Star3664 and no option to change it, not matter how hard I looked. Eventually I found a report that Reddit removed the option to change your username a few months ago. So I’m afraid it’s just luck. You can set a profile name, mine is here – TalkingWeb – but you can’t make that the name that people see on your comments.

How to find Subreddits

The whole crux of Reddit is commenting in communities, but it can seem a bit hard to find relevant communities to join at first.

Subreddits are all called something with r/ at the front – I guess this is to symbolise how they’re all sub-divisions of the top of the site which is “Reddit” – so the “/” symbolises a directory structure like how you store files on a computer, or on a server. Some well known ones are:

  • r/AskReddit – open-ended questions and answers.
  • r/technology – news and discussions about tech.
  • r/aww – adorable animal pictures.

There’s a search bar on Reddit where you can search for r/[whatever keyword you might want to chat about]. You don’t have to put r/ but if you do, it tells the search that you’re looking for a subreddit rather than a user. (To find a user, you search with u/ infront of their name – so searching for u/Alarming-Star3664 would find me.)

Other ways to find Subreddits from the Reddit website are:

  • Visit “r/findareddit”
    This subreddit is dedicated to helping people locate communities based on their interests.
  • Browse “Popular” or “All”
    The “Popular” feed shows trending posts, while “All” lets you explore outside your subscriptions.
  • Check Sidebar Recommendations
    Many subreddits list similar communities in their sidebar.

Because Reddit is so massive and it’s not super easy to find every subreddit there, various other websites have popped up to help you find relevant communities to join. Some examples are:

What should you use Reddit for?

Reddit can be as casual or as deep as you make it. Whether you’re looking for expert advice, memes, or a new hobby, there’s likely a subreddit waiting for you. Personally I intend to use it for chatting about SEO and all things website related, but then will also no doubt fall into celeb gossip and memes.