R/HaveWeMet

Last updated

r/HaveWeMet
Type of site
Subreddit
Available inEnglish
FoundedEarly 2017
Founder(s) Devuluh
URL reddit.com/r/HaveWeMet
Users 143,000 members

r/HaveWeMet is a subreddit where members roleplay as residents of a fictional town known as Lower Duck Pond. Members also create fictional, in-depth personas for themselves. As mutual residents of Lower Duck Pond, users pretend to know each other in improvised interactions, continuously developing the lore of the town. The Verge compared HaveWeMet to a "long-running D&D campaign". [1] [2] HaveWeMet was created by the user Devuluh, or David, a college sophomore majoring in computer science, in early 2017. [3]

Contents

History and content

HaveWeMet was created by the user Devuluh, or David, a sophomore majoring in computer science, in early 2017. [3] He was inspired to create the subreddit after starting a thread on the subreddit findareddit, discovering that there were no communities where people pretended to know each other. The first members joined from this thread. The next day, HaveWeMet was on trending on Reddit. [1] Guidelines include that members must stay in-character and act like they have personally known every user they interact with for a long time. They cannot break the illusion of the basic premise. [3]

Interactions are improvised and roleplayed. Storylines are often protracted and span multiple forum posts and comments. This develops the lore behind the town of Lower Duck Pond. Members invent fictional personas they roleplay as, and often use flairs ("nametags") next to their usernames to mark the name of their character. [1] [2]

A town council was formed to discuss concerns in the community. Members can role-play as animals: several animals such as "Ulysses the alpaca" have been elected mayor of Lower Duck Pond. Unlike most subreddits, members are allowed to operate multiple accounts to role-play as different characters. User WanderCold, one of the more prominent members, role-plays as a weatherman with a merchandise shop and regularly reports on fictionalized weather. [1] Several fictional locations in the town, such as stores, bars, and amenities, have been established. [1] There are also fictionalized local events, such as a murder and occult activities. [3] Strange "quirks", such as having a group of elks for pets, are accepted unquestioningly within the roleplay. [2]

HaveWeMet has inspired several spinoffs, such as the subreddit WillWeMeet, a futuristic variant, and the more seriously-oriented subreddit LakeWobegon. The subreddit HaveWeMeta is where users are able to comment on events in Lower Duck Pond out-of-character and from a real-world context. [1] Two years after its inception, in September 2019, HaveWeMet had over 87,000 members. [1]

Reception

The Verge compared HaveWeMet to a "long-running D&D campaign". [1] It has also been compared to the Facebook page of a small town. [2] [3] Neon listed HaveWeMet as one of the weirdest subreddits. [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reddit</span> American social news and discussion site

Reddit is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and forum social network. Registered users submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images, and videos, which are then voted up or down by other members. Posts are organized by subject into user-created boards called "communities" or "subreddits". Submissions with more upvotes appear towards the top of their subreddit and, if they receive enough upvotes, ultimately on the site's front page. Reddit administrators moderate the communities. Moderation is also conducted by community-specific moderators, who are not Reddit employees. It is operated by Reddit, Inc., based in San Francisco.

A social news website is a website that features user-posted stories. Such stories are ranked based on popularity, as voted on by other users of the site or by website administrators. Users typically comment online on the news posts and these comments may also be ranked in popularity. Since their emergence with the birth of Web 2.0, social news sites have been used to link many types of information, including news, humor, support, and discussion. All such websites allow the users to submit content and each site differs in how the content is moderated. On the Slashdot and Fark websites, administrators decide which articles are selected for the front page. On Reddit and Digg, the articles that get the most votes from the community of users will make it to the front page. Many social news websites also feature an online comment system, where users discuss the issues raised in an article. Some of these sites have also applied their voting system to the comments, so that the most popular comments are displayed first. Some social news websites also have a social networking service, in that users can set up a user profile and follow other users' online activity on the website.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steve Huffman</span> American web developer and entrepreneur (born 1983/1984)

Steve Huffman, also known by his Reddit username spez, is an American web developer and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of Reddit, a social news and discussion website, which ranks in the top 20 websites in the world. He also co-founded the airfare search engine website Hipmunk, which shut down in 2020.

Shadow banning, also called stealth banning, hellbanning, ghost banning, and comment ghosting, is the practice of blocking or partially blocking a user or the user's content from some areas of an online community in such a way that the ban is not readily apparent to the user, regardless of whether the action is taken by an individual or an algorithm. For example, shadow-banned comments posted to a blog or media website would be visible to the sender, but not to other users accessing the site.

Some communities on the social news site Reddit are devoted to explicit, violent, or hateful material, and have been the topic of controversy. Controversial Reddit communities sometimes receive significant media coverage.

Voat Inc was an American alt-tech news aggregator and social networking service where registered community members could submit content such as text posts and direct links. Registered users could then vote on these submissions. Content entries were organized by areas of interest called "subverses". The website was widely described as a Reddit clone and a hub for the alt-right. Voat CEO Justin Chastain made an announcement on December 22, 2020 that Voat would shut down. The site was shut down on December 25, 2020.

The Button was an online meta-game and social experiment that featured an online button and 60-second countdown timer that would reset each time the button was pressed. The experiment was created by Josh Wardle, also known as powerlanguage. The experiment was hosted on the social networking website Reddit beginning on April 1, 2015 and was active until June 5, 2015, the first time that no user pressed the button before the timer reached zero. The game was started by a Reddit administrator.

_9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9, sometimes abbreviated to 9M9H9E9 or MHE, is the screen name of an anonymous writer of creepypasta speculative fiction on the social news website Reddit.

r/The_Donald Subreddit in support of U.S. president Donald Trump

r/The_Donald was a subreddit where participants created discussions and Internet memes in support of U.S. president Donald Trump. Initially created in June 2015 following the announcement of Trump's presidential campaign, the community grew to over 790,000 subscribers who described themselves as "Patriots". The community was banned in June 2020 for violating Reddit rules on harassment and targeting. It was ranked as one of the most active communities on Reddit.

r/place Online social experiment on Reddit

r/place is a recurring collaborative project and social experiment hosted on the content aggregator site Reddit. Originally launched on April Fools' Day 2017, it has since been repeated again on April Fools' Day 2022 and on July 20, 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NPC (meme)</span> An insult that implies a person lacks critical thinking

The NPC, derived from non-player character, is an Internet meme that represents people who do not think for themselves or do not make their own decisions; those who lack introspection or intrapersonal communication. The meme gained further viral status on TikTok, with the surge of "NPC Streamers". In terms of politics, it's often been used by those with anti-establishment views to describe those who fail to question authority, "groupthink", or a stance that would display conformity and obedience. The NPC meme, which graphically is based on the Wojak meme, was created in July 2016 by an anonymous author and first published on the imageboard 4chan, where the idea and inspiration behind the meme were introduced.

r/dataisbeautiful Subreddit focused on data visualization

r/dataisbeautiful, also known as Data Is Beautiful, is a subreddit dedicated to aesthetically pleasing works of data visualization. It was created in 2012; as of January 2022, it has over 20 million members.

r/wallstreetbets Subreddit dedicated to stock market and options trading

r/wallstreetbets, also known as WallStreetBets or WSB, is a subreddit where participants discuss stock and option trading. It has become notable for its colorful and profane jargon, aggressive trading strategies, and for playing a major role in the GameStop short squeeze that caused losses for some US firms and short sellers in a few days in early 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Backrooms</span> Fictional location

The Backrooms are a fictional concept first mentioned on a 2019 4chan thread. One of the best known examples of the liminal space aesthetic, the Backrooms are commonly depicted as an extradimensional space containing impossibly large expanses of empty rooms accessed by "no-clipping out of reality" in certain areas.

r/AmItheAsshole, abbreviated as AITA, is a subreddit where users post about their real-world interpersonal conflicts and receive judgement from fellow redditors. The subreddit allows users to solicit and express opinions about the appropriateness of the actions of people in specific scenarios – especially the actions of the person reporting about the situation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Blip</span> Event in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

The Blip is a major fictional event and period of time depicted in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Blip began in 2018 when Thanos, wielding all six Infinity Stones in the Infinity Gauntlet, exterminated half of all living things in the universe, chosen at random, with the snap of his fingers. The Blip ended five years later, in 2023, when the Avengers utilized time travel to collect the Infinity Stones from prior points in the timeline and, with a second snap by Avengers member Bruce Banner, restored all those previously killed by Thanos.

r/antiwork is a subreddit associated with contemporary labor movements, critique of work, and the anti-work movement. The forum's slogan reads: "Unemployment for all, not just the rich!" Posts on the forum commonly describe employees' negative experiences at work, dissatisfaction with working conditions, and unionization. Various actions that have been promoted on the subreddit include a consumer boycott of Black Friday as well as the submission of fake jobs applications to the Kellogg Company after the company announced plans to replace 1,400 striking workers during the 2021 Kellogg's strike. The popularity of r/antiwork increased in 2020 and 2021, and the subreddit gained 900,000 subscribers in 2021 alone, accumulating nearly 1,700,000 subscribers by the end of the year. It is often associated with other ideologically similar subreddits such as r/latestagecapitalism. r/antiwork has been compared to the Occupy Wall Street movement due to the subreddit's intellectual foundations and decentralized ethos.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Herman Cain Award</span> Ironic award related to COVID-19

The Herman Cain Award is an ironic award given to people who expressed hesitancy toward COVID-19 vaccines or face masks, who later died from COVID-19 or its complications. The award is named after American businessman and political figure Herman Cain, a Republican politician who died of COVID-19 complications after attending a 2020 Trump Tulsa rally in support of then-President Donald Trump without wearing a face mask. He'd publicly tweeted the disease was not deadly and discouraged people from taking it seriously. A text label which says "Awarded" is emblazoned on the conversation thread containing evidence and community discussions of a third party's anti-COVID mitigation positions and their subsequent death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2023 Reddit API controversy</span> Protests against Reddits API-access prices

In April 2023, the discussion and news aggregation website Reddit announced its intentions to charge for its application programming interface (API), a feature which had been free since 2008, causing a dispute. The move forced multiple third-party applications to shut down and threatened accessibility applications and moderation tools.

r/malefashionadvice is a subreddit for men seeking fashion advice. Founded in September 2009, the subreddit features men providing their outfits and asking for advice.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Maher, Cian (August 2, 2019). "Welcome to Lower Duck Pond, a fake town of 82,000 people". The Verge . Retrieved October 31, 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Harrington, Kylie (August 31, 2018). "Welcome To HaveWeMet, The Subreddit Where Everyone Pretends To Know Each Other". Study Breaks. Retrieved October 31, 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Neumann, Sean (September 6, 2019). "A GOOD PLACE: THE FAKE TOWN WHERE EVERYBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME". The Outline . Retrieved October 31, 2022.
  4. Déniel, Orlane (March 10, 2022). "Bienvenue sur Reddit, et ses catégories les plus bizarres..." Neon (in French). Archived from the original on March 30, 2023. Retrieved October 31, 2022.