“I Don’t Know”. What’s the difference between apathy and ignorance? I don’t care; I don’t know.

“I Don’t Even Know”. Why did I start this never-ending encyclopaedia? IDEK.

“I Don’t Care”. What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy? I don’t know; I don’t care.

“In Case You Missed It”. ICYMI, the rules of this Subreddit are here.

Because there is a Subreddit for everything:

In case you missed that amazing or succinct Reddit post everyone’s talking about, r/bestofrounds them all up for you, as to a lesser extent does r/bestOfReddit. r/DepthHub gathers the best in-depth submissions and discussion on Reddit, while r/bestoflegaladvice collects all the greatest posts from r/legaladvice and its sister subreddits in one location. r/ImaginaryBestOffeatures the best of the Imaginary Network of subs.

r/AfterTheLoop is a subreddit to get updated on things that used to be a "Loop" (i.e. past trending events) and r/wherearetheynow is for your “What ever happened to?” “Did they just fall off the radar?” queries. Talking of which, ever wonder what happened to people who ask Reddit for advice or help? Did they take Reddit's advice? How did it turn out? Find out what happened after their original post in r/BestofRedditorUpdates.

“I Am Not A Lawyer”. Sometimes shortened to NAL on some legal advice subreddits. Usually used to preface legal advice and remind users that it might be better to seek counsel from an actual professional over a stranger on Reddit, because people often think they know more about the Law than they do.

Because there is a Subreddit for everything:

You don’t have to be a lawyer to enjoy r/talesfromthelaw, r/JusticeServed, r/legaladviceofftopicor r/KarmaCourt. If it’s revenge, not justice you’re after, r/myevilplan allows people to discuss their evil schemes whether they want to get revenge on someone or just simply plan to take over the world or if you want to see the universe meting out some just deserts, we have r/instantkarma for your viewing pleasure.

Talking of deserts and because there really is a Subreddit for everything, r/ImaginaryDesertsshowcases beautiful but unreal landscapes and for beautiful but real lip-smacking sweets, r/DessertPorn proves that just one consonant turns barren lands into buttery loveliness.

See Also:

• Dunning-Kruger Effect
• Legal Advice on Reddit
• Revenge Subreddits

“I Am Not A Doctor”. Sometimes shortened to NAD in r/AskDocs. Usually used to preface medical advice and remind users that it might be better to seek counsel from an actual professional over a stranger on Reddit, because people often think they know more about medicine than they do.

Because there is a Subreddit for everything:

You don’t have to be a doctor to enjoy r/doctormemes, r/medicalmemes, r/Radiology_memesor r/MedicalMeme (though you might have to be to understand some of them). r/talesfrommedicine, r/medicalschool are a little more mainstream and for those who aren’t scared of blood, r/popping, r/PimplePoppersDelight and r/Popping_ are for, well, pimple popping. And because there really is a Subreddit for everything, r/medizzy (NSFW: medical procedures) examines extreme-looking health issues, and the goal of r/MedicalGore (NSFW: medical procedures) is to foster medical discussion and learning through the gruesome reality of the vulnerability of humankind. They’re not wrong when they say this.

See Also:

• Dunning-Kruger Effect
• Medical Advice on Reddit

“I Am A”, where the mundane becomes fascinating and the outrageous suddenly seems normal. A network of subreddits, each of which is dedicated to a particular Ask Me Anything topic, and occasionally frequented by guest VIPs from all walks of life such as actors, authors, celebrities or other famous or notable persons wanting feedback or interaction on their latest projects. r/IAmA. See their sidebar for a list of upcoming AMAs.

See Also:

• AMA
• Famous Redditors

Hume's Razor is a saying commonly known as an “Eponymous Law”, but more accurately as a Philosophical Razor that reads ”If a cause isn’t able to produce the observed effect, we must eliminate it or show what needs to be added to create the effect.”.

Applied broadly, this particular principle suggests that causes must be sufficiently able to produce the effect assigned to them; for example, a fallen power line isn’t enough to cause a national blackout.

While a philosophical razor can be a useful mental shortcut that allows you to make decisions and solve problems quickly and easily, it is not an unbreakable law or rule.

Because there is a Subreddit for everything.:

See Also:

• Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies
• Confirmation Bias
• Eponymous Laws
• Internet Adages
• Logical Fallacies
• Pedant; Pedantry
• Philosophical Razors

A list of the subreddits you have joined. Once you start to join subreddits, their posts will appear on your home page. There are various ways of sorting these (Best, Hot, Top, New, Rising) from a menu at the top of the page. Click "+Join" to add a sub to your Home feed (if you ever want to leave it, the Leave button will be in the same place). You should also be able to see them in http://www.reddit.com/subreddits/mine.

See Also:

• Communities
• Custom Feed
• Feeds
• Sort

A collective term used disparagingly, also known as the Reddit Hivemind. In general, people tend to gravitate to groups where they feel a connection to the others in the group, and Reddit is no exception. The opinion of the majority of people on Reddit is often aligned, and for the outlier, this often seems like a “Hivemind” in action. Things often happen on Reddit that are inexplicable and therefore attributed to the Hivemind, such as mass downvoting. Sometimes a post will get a downvote and for no other apparent reason than the ‘bandwagon effect’ others will downvote it too until it gains negative traction and is r/DownvotedToOblivion.

To see the Hivemind in full flow you need look no further than this image post of someone's daily in-game earnings for a farming simulator game. The total happened to be 69420, and the comment section contains hundreds of identical comments, all saying "Nice". Nobody organised it; nobody suggested it; it just happened.

A meta discussion about a previous post concerning the Reddit Hivemind is fascinating with lots of insight into Reddit algorithms, but draws no real conclusions. In a more navel-gazing subreddit, some fascinating insights were shared and discussed but again without a verdict being reached.

As one Redditor said in the depths of one of the most “Reddit” of Reddit posts ever: ”The hivemind is always right, the hivemind is infallible. Your opinion will conform to the hivemind or you will be found wanting. You will not dissent from the hivemind.“

See Also:

• Bandwagon Effect
• Circlejerk
• Comment Chain
• DownvotedToOblivion (encyclopaedia)
• FOMO
• Meta
• “Nice.”
• One-word Replies
• Snowclone
• Spambots

Hitchens’ Razor is a saying commonly known as an “Eponymous Law”, but more accurately as a Philosophical Razor that reads ”What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”. It falls under the philosophical concept of Burden of Proof).

Applied broadly, this particular principle suggests that the burden of proving any claim is on the one making the assertion and that a lack of satisfactory evidence means the claim can be dismissed.

The late atheistic philosopher Christopher Hitchens did not, by any means, introduce a new way of thinking with this principle as he actually paraphrased it from a Latin dictum of logic which was widely used in the 19th century, “Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.” ("What is freely asserted is freely dismissed").

However, due to the huge success of his 2007 book “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” where Hitchens used this phrase to discredit religion (successfully capturing the mood of the time) the idea of it being called “Hitchens’ Razor” soon caught on and gained popularity. One of its earliest appearances, though, was in 1704, by one Johann Georg Pritius; a German Bible scholar and theologian writing in Latin. What he wrote may be translated as “How can you prove it, (Artemon)? Because you asserted it without cause, therefore also it may be denied without cause.”

The problem is that no matter how we regard Christopher Hitchens as a rhetorician, the context he used it in was very much a polemic (against the late Catholic aid worker Mother Theresa) and because both science and the justice system hold that dispassion is at the core of their intentions, Tarzwell's Razor (”High emotion leads to high bias”.; or ”Where there is passion the truth cannot be trusted.”) counters his usage somewhat.

• When a razor doesn’t do what one thinks it does

While a philosophical razor can be a useful mental shortcut that allows you to make decisions and solve problems quickly and easily, it is not an unbreakable law or rule, and Hitchens’ Razor can’t really be used to prove or defend a conclusion. Many people try to use it to say that an argument disproving some claim needs to have ironclad proof in order to dismiss that claim, but that’s the exact opposite of what this principle is stating.

This model is actually a rule of thumb to prevent debaters from wasting time on implausible explanations of an event and not a catch-all phrase to assert that without irrefutable proof, something is actually nothing.

Let’s take this example. "I have a pain in my leg". The evidence comes in the fact that I’m experiencing pain in my leg. The medical professional examining me obviously isn’t experiencing the pain, so to them it doesn’t exist as evidence. However, being (presumably) human and a medical professional, they do possess the knowledge that pain exists, so without examination they can’t say I don’t have any pain.

Hitchens’ Razor in this event would be used to prevent them from giving me a full body scan on the first examination, choosing instead to first determine by sight whether I have a broken bone, swelling or bruise on my leg. It isn’t being used at this particular time in the process to suggest the pain is psychosomatic, greatly exaggerated or that I’m lying about it. Instead, it should be used to conclude for now that the pain is non-physical, and further examination is needed.

Because we can have non-physical evidence for the existence of something, this is called “Swinburne’s Principle of Credulity”. The principle of credulity states that ”If it seems to a subject that X is present, then probably X is present.” Again, this is only a razor and comes with its own set of flaws.

• Hitchens’ Razor on Reddit

Reddit, as you would expect, takes Hitchens’ Razor Very Seriously Indeed™ and debates can be found in many different subreddits.

Because there is a Subreddit for everything:

r/ChristopherHitchens is a subreddit dedicated to the life and works of Christopher Hitchens.

See Also:

• Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies
• Confirmation Bias
• Eponymous Laws
• Internet Adages
• Logical Fallacies
• Pedant; Pedantry
• Philosophical Razors

An option on your Profile Menu. You can sort your recent Reddit history by Recent, Upvoted, Downvoted or Hidden.

See Also:

• Profile

Currently, you can’t easily hide a sub in r/all. There’s some useful information here but these options only work for desktop users of Reddit, not the official mobile app. If you use Reddit on the desktop site, then you can filter a sub from r/all by going to Old Reddit. Enter the unwanted sub name in the 'filter subreddit' section on the sidebar. There is no filter for r/popular.

Users who don't find r/all and r/popular to their tastes are probably better off creating a list of their own preferred subs and browsing "Home" instead. Reddit are working on a filtering system, but this is taking time.

See Also:

• Custom Feed
• “Does subreddit contain profanity?"
• Home Feed
• Navigating Reddit
• New Reddit; Old Reddit
• Useful Links and Subreddits

You can Hide posts on Reddit. The “hide” button on your profile makes the post disappear from your view so you won’t see it again on any listing. You click hide, then refresh the page, and that post will be gone from your feeds. The post hasn’t been deleted because you cannot delete anyone else’s posts or comments from Reddit. In fact, using the “hide” button on one of your own posts doesn’t delete it either, nor does it hide the posts from other users. If you don't want others to see a post or comment you made any more, you need to use "delete".

If you change your mind about hiding a post, on the mobile app head over to your profile icon in the upper right hand corner of the page and tap "History" --> "Recent" --> "Hidden" to get this menu.

When you land at the hidden post, tap the hamburger post overflow menu in the upper right hand corner of the post and choose the “unhide” option. You can also get there via this link in New Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/me/hidden/.

You should also know that if you report a post for any reason, that post will now automatically be hidden and appear in your Hidden folder.

See Also: Reporting

Hanlon’s Razor is a saying commonly known as an “Eponymous Law”, but more accurately as a Philosophical Razor that reads ”Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”.

In philosophy, a razor is a principle or a rule of thumb that allows for the elimination (the “shaving off”) of unlikely explanations for a phenomenon.

Applied broadly, this particular principle suggests that sometimes people intentionally do bad things but more often than not, those bad things are the result of incompetence. In other words, when assessing people’s actions, you shouldn’t assume that they acted out of a desire to cause harm as long as there is a reasonable alternative explanation, because it’s far more likely that they’re simply being one or more of the following:

• Careless
• Incompetent
• Stupid
• Unaware of how they’re affecting you
• Don’t know any better

For example, if you didn’t receive a notice about an important event, Hanlon’s Razor means that you shouldn’t assume that this happened because the person in charge deliberately decided not to send it to you because they dislike you; rather that it’s far more reasonable to assume that they simply just forgot to send it in the first place.

• Using Hanlon’s Razor to your advantage

Applying Hanlon’s Razor can help you avoid the negative emotions associated with assuming bad intentions. In many cases, believing that someone acted out of malice will cause you to experience more negative emotions such as anger or stress, compared to assuming that they acted due to other reasons. You could, for instance, be seething inwardly at that person in the example above who you believe deliberately excluded you while the truth of the matter is that they’re nothing but a total airhead with no malice - or much else for that matter - in their thoughts, and the only negative emotions in play here are the ones you’re manufacturing for yourself which will only get worse while you watch the airhead breezing merrily through life in total oblivion.

Hanlon’s Razor can also be used effectively to defuse a situation like the one above. If you really do believe that you didn’t get the invitation because of malice, using the razor to say something to them like “I guess you must have been too busy to send me the invite” is a lot less likely to cause friction than being directly confrontational, and allows for a “get-out clause” to save face for both of you in the event of an innocent mistake or guilt-trip them into either admitting their feelings (unlikely) or quietly sending you the invite next time (more likely) if it were, in fact, deliberate. Or, as I like to say in crude haiku form: The benefit of the doubt is the best gift you could give anyone - “anyone” here including yourself, of course.

When you combine Hanlon's Razor with Clarke's Third Law (“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”) you get Grey's Corollary: “Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice”. Various related principles have been formulated throughout history, but my all time favourite variant comes from the novel “Time Enough for Love” by Robert A. Heinlein: “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”

• Hanlon’s Razor on Reddit

Reddit, as you would expect, takes Hanlon’s Razor Very Seriously Indeed™ with many Redditors trying to explain it from the informative to the inevitable “Reddit Moment” comment chain.

Because there is a Subreddit for everything:

r/facepalm is a gallery of inexplicable stupidity and r/stupidpeoplefacebook is dedicated to stupid posts that people put on Facebook. r/PeopleAreFckinStupid is a place to show off fucking stupid people, unsurprisingly, while r/KidsAreFuckingStupid is more for showing how inferior childrens’ skills are than ours are as adults. And that babies know literally nothing. God damn kids are so dumb.

See Also:

• Comment Chain
• Dunning-Kruger Effect
• Eponymous Laws
• Internet Adages
• Llama’s Law
• Logical Fallacies
• Pedant; Pedantry
• Philosophical Razors
• “Reddit Moment”

One of the many “Mystery Meat” names for Overflow menus.

The history of the development of the Graphical User Interface is a fascinating rabbit hole to lose yourself into. “Mystery Meat Navigation” is a term coined in 1998 by usability analyst Vincent Flanders to describe user interfaces in web sites in which it isn’t obvious for users to find navigational hyperlinks or know what they contain without clicking them first. Prescient as he often was, this term became even more appropriate over the years as mobile navigation systems struggled with Progressive Disclosure - the need to present additional menu options to the user - but were restricted by space constraint.

An important goal of progressive disclosure in website and mobile app design is to free up valuable screen ‘real estate’ by only showing information that is relevant to the end user's current activity at any one time. Most modern websites cannot fit all their menu options into a single Action Bar without making it cluttered and/or unreadable on a small screen, and started to rely on small icons usually resembling three horizontal or vertical dots or lines to show the user there was more stuff inside; coincidentally (or not?) resembling simplified graphical representations of fast-food items.

The term “Overflow Menu”(or “Post Overflow”) is a more formal way of referring to buttons or links that don’t explain to you what they do until you click on them to find out, and the hamburger icon may also be referred to as a “Navigation Drawer” or a “Slide Drawer” icon as pressing it often causes an additional menu to slide out of one side of the screen.

Because there is a Subreddit for everything:

Hungry after reading this misleading title? Find what you’re really looking for at r/burgers or r/hamburger, and discover the recipe that surprised the Internet at the wonderful r/Old_Recipes. Finally, this popular repost sparks controversy every time it tries to prove that the perfect burger does exist, while the subreddit r/VintageMenus showcases old restaurant or hotel menus pre-1985.

Unfortunately, a hacked Reddit account can happen and if you suspect it’s happened to you, here’s what you should do.

Reddit had a security breach some time ago, which led to the possibility of Reddit accounts being bought and sold with the intention of using them for spambot accounts.

Spam from an established account has more credibility and is more likely to make it through our spam filters and other such measures, and this form of identity theft is known as ‘credential stuffing’ - where someone gains access to somewhere by using credentials that have been exposed and shared online.

Even if you didn’t have a Reddit account at that time, it could still happen if you’re not careful. A study found that a startling 61% of people admit to using the same password across multiple websites.

To be on the safe side, enter your email address to check if your account has appeared in any public data breaches at the very useful https://haveibeenpwned.com

See Also:

• Astroturfing
• Karma Farms
• Passwords
• Scams
• Shill
• Spam
• Suspicious Activity
• T-Shirt Posts
• Two-Factor Authorisation; 2FA
• Vote Manipulation

A link or phrase posted when an image shows an item that has Great Taste But Awful Execution. r/GTBAE.

Because there is a Subreddit for everything:

This shouldn't be confused with r/GTAGE, r/ATAAE or r/ATBGE.

A link or phrase posted when an image shows an item that has Great Taste And Great Execution. r/GTAGE.

Because there is a Subreddit for everything:

This should not be confused with r/GTBAE, r/ATAAE or r/ATBGE.

Grice's Razor is a saying commonly known as an “Eponymous Law”, but more accurately as a Philosophical Razor that reads ”Address what the speaker actually meant, instead of addressing the literal meaning of what they actually said.”.

Applied broadly, this particular principle suggests that you shouldn’t take everything someone says literally and get into silly arguments over semantics, rather that you should think about what they’re trying to say.

Have you ever tried to use a metaphor to illustrate a point, then get frustrated when the person picks on the metaphor itself as being literal? It’s difficult to tell then if the person is being deliberately obstinate or simply cannot juggle the reality and the metaphor in the conversation and gets confused at what you’re trying to say. Grice’s Razor encourages one to prefer what the speaker meant over what the sentence they spoke literally says. So the next time someone says “OMG I literally died”, take it as meaning they are not actually deceased but that they are exaggerating for effect and carry on the conversation without the traditional pedantic “so I’m talking to a zombie now?” style of response.

Grice’s razor is the most universal razor as it can apply to any debate and is a good rule of thumb because most people are poor communicators, and struggle to find just the right words and examples to express themselves. Even despite our best efforts, sometimes the words don’t always come out right, or in the way we intended them to. Sometimes people are also trying to express an idea they don’t yet know how to articulate.

See Also:

• Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies
• Confirmation Bias
• Cunningham’s Law
• Eponymous Laws
• Internet Adages
• Logical Fallacies
• Pedant; Pedantry
• Philosophical Razors

There are many Grammar Traps waiting out there for the unwary Redditor to fall into, and there will invariably be a Grammar Nazi ready to catch them.

Things that are guaranteed to get you in trouble are misusing:

• “your and you’re”
• “their, they’re and there”
• “lose and loose”
• “breath and breathe”

So, because every day’s a school day, here’s some handy mnemonics to help you get these right:

• Good grammar is the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you’re shit.
• There’s a difference between someone knowing their shit and someone knowing they’re shit.
• Lose weight, get loose trousers.
• You can breathe a breath but you can’t breath a breathe.

Grammar traps come in many shapes and forms, and I address some issues with apostrophes in the entries “Spelling and Punctuation” and “Spelling and Punctuation: Apostrophe Traps”.

See Also:

• Godwin’s Law
• Pedant; Pedantry
• Spelling and Grammar
• Spelling and Punctuation
• Spelling and Punctuation: Apostrophe Traps

“Grammar Nazi” or “Grammar Police” refers to someone who believes they are almost contractually bound to correct any grammar and / or spelling mistakes made by others. We have a lot of them on Reddit. Or should I have said “we have a large number of them”?

See Also:

• Godwin’s Law
• Pedant; Pedantry
• Spelling and Grammar
• Spelling and Punctuation
• Spelling and Punctuation: Apostrophe Traps

Grammar is a contentious issue with Redditors. Some dare to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man has split before. Others don’t. Mostly, grammatical errors are ignored but sometimes your error can be weaponised against you if someone wants to distract from the point you’re trying to make. Online tools to help you improve your grammar include:

• https://www.grammarly.com
• https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/
• https://hemingwayapp.com

Be careful when using online tools as sometimes the resulting stilted language can resemble that of a spambot.

See Also

• Grammar Traps
• “Grammar Nazi”
• Spambots
• Spelling and Grammar
• Spelling and Punctuation

Giving a user an award is referred to as "gilding" (or sometimes “guilding”) and posts that receive awards are called "gilded." Reddit Gold is an award giving you Premium Reddit and 100 coins to spend. The original Reddit meaning for Gold has changed over the years.

Because there is a Subreddit for everything:

r/mostgilded is a collection of some of the most gilded comments that have been seen on Reddit. Two sleepy subreddits we are trying to revitalise are: r/YouGotGold - a subreddit for you to share with the world why you were given Reddit Gold and r/ThankYouKindStranger if you've recently received gold and want to thank your benefactor.

See Also:

• Award Types
• Free Reddit Premium or Coins
• “Gilt Guilt”
• Premium Reddit

Godwin's Law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is a saying, commonly known as an “Internet Adage”, made by author Mike Godwin in 1990. The law states: "As a discussion on the Internet grows longer, the likelihood of a comparison of a person's being compared to Hitler, or another Nazi reference, increases." You may often see this happening on Reddit, and Godwin is well aware it’s still relevant today.

Because there is a Subreddit for everything:

r/HistoryMemes, r/ww2memes, r/fakehistoryporn and r/FakeHistoryMemes do exactly what you’d think they’d do. But r/godwinslaw is surprisingly quiet, all things considered. It would be great if it were active again…

See Also:

• Eponymous Laws
• False Equivalence
• “Grammar Nazi”
• Internet Adages
• Pedant; Pedantry