Everyone pretends that Reddit is some secret group that no one else is a part of. When you realize someone you know in real life is on Reddit as well you can share your own special fist bump or idiotic comment about a narwhal baconing at midnight with giddy excitement. The site garnered over 2 billion page views in December 2011 and traffic has drastically increased since then. It’s not the cool, hipster internet club that it (never quite really) used to be.
Considering Reddit’s popularity, a lot of people don’t understand much about how it works. Most Redditors read over a stream of posts without taking in all the information being presented due to a lack of background knowledge. According to r/todayilearned, you have to practice something for 10,000 hours before you can truly be considered an expert in that field. This collection of acronyms won’t put in the hard worked hours of upvoting, commenting on and reposting content on Reddit, but it will make you feel cool when you know what they mean and your friends don’t.
IAMA/AMA: I Am A, Ask Me Anything. The best content on Reddit often comes from AMAs. In these text based posts, a user declares their identity (IAMA Cat Herder/Pro Athlete/Snoop Dawg) and then answers whatever questions are posed by the masses of the web. Woody Harrelson ignores statutory rape allegations, blind people explain what they imagine the sensation of sight to be like, and Bryan Cranston tells you about being the star of Breaking Bad. Anyone can post a silly video or cat meme, but AMAs offer unique insights into peoples lives that simply did not exist before Reddit.
ITT: In This Thread. An hour or two into a given AskReddit post, ITT comments will start popping up in an attempt to summarize the majority of the content. For a thread about bad experiences Chefs have had, ITT: People burn themselves. For the AskReddit thread “What was losing your virginity like?”, ITT: Premature ejaculation. For this Article, ITT: Explanations of reddit acronyms.
FTFY: Fixed That For You. When someone makes a simple error misses an obvious opportunity for a joke, someone will reply to their comment with a correction the obvious joke followed by FTFY.
DAE: Does anyone else. DAE wonder what DAE stands for? Not anymore I hope. Should be pretty straightforward at this point.
OP: Original Poster. The person who originally shared the content being discussed. When OP puts up a picture of a safe and doesn’t put a follow up with the contents, OP didn’t deliver.
TL;DR: Too Long; Didn’t Read. This acronym is a favorite of lazy redditors. That’s because it is used to summarize a large amount of text and compact it into a smaller, easier to comprehend statement. Redditors tend to go on and on in their storytelling. Sometimes this results in a beautiful comment with rich detail that make the story sing. Sometimes people drift off into irrelevant details while over-enjoying the smell of their own farts. Some choose to read the whole comment, some prefer the shortened version. TL; DR: “TL;DR:” is a summary of a long comment.
Obviously these are not all of the acronyms to grace the land of Reddit. Some are simple enough to ELI5 (Explain Like I’m 5) and others are NSFW (Not Safe For Work [Sexual]), although IANAL actually means I Am Not A Lawyer. These are just a few of the ones YSK (You Should Know). Hopefully this PSA (Not even Reddit exclusive, just Google it) will have you better informed as you continue your quest to become a Reddit expert.
That was actually really a good overview! I’ve been on Reddit a bit but never really contributed to the conversation.
Thanks Daniel! It’s just the tip of the ice berg but glad you got a good start.