Snark subreddits

Last updated

Snark subreddits are subreddits created to gossip about and express frustration toward, or "snark" on, public figures, largely female influencers such as YouTubers and TikTokers. [1] [2] [3] Members of snark subreddits are known as "snarkers". [4] Some snark subreddits, such as r/Blogsnark and r/NYCinfluencersnark, discuss influencers in general, while others focus on particular individuals or families. "Fundie" snark subreddits—such as r/DuggarsSnark, which discusses the Duggar family of the TLC show 19 Kids and Counting —include discussions on Christian fundamentalist influencers and often consist of ex-fundamentalists. Snark subreddits have been criticized, both by critics and by their targets, as a form of cyberbullying and as invasive of their subjects.

Contents

Subreddits

The subreddit r/Blogsnark was created in 2015 to discuss influencers and bloggers, with threads dedicated to subsections of influencers like family channels, food influencers, and podcasters. In March 2020, it rose 300 spots on the list of the subreddits with the most members; its membership more than doubled from 2020 to 2022, by which point it had more than 100,000 members. [5] Geoff Weiss of Business Insider described it as "arguably the most popular" snark subreddit in 2023. [4] r/NYCinfluencersnark focuses on discussions of New York City-based influencers and had over 95 thousand members by 2024, while r/LAinfluencersnark covers Los Angeles-based influencers. [2] r/munchsnark, a subreddit surrounding influencers that members accused of faking their illnesses, was banned for violating Reddit's rule against promoting hate. [6]

Hilaria Baldwin(cropped).jpg
Calloway Polaroid (cropped, retouched).jpg
Some popular snark subreddits target specific influencers and media figures, such as Hilaria Baldwin for r/HilariaBaldwin or Caroline Calloway for r/SmolBeanSnark.

r/SmolBeanSnark focuses on writer Caroline Calloway and provides updates on her life and career. They also, as of 2024, organize meetings and create crafts based on their dislike of Calloway. [7] r/HilariaBaldwin focuses on Hilaria Baldwin, the wife of actor Alec Baldwin, and promotes theories that Baldwin is lying about her life. [8] A snark subreddit for influencer Trisha Paytas, r/Trishyland, was created in October 2021, soon after her exit from her collaborative podcast with Ethan Klein, Frenemies . It had over 42,000 members by 2022, with its membership doubling after Paytas announced that she was pregnant. [9] After an article by Kat Tenbarge examining the subreddit's harassment of Paytas was published in 2022, Reddit banned r/Trishyland. [2] r/sevdaelasnark focuses on food TikToker Sevda Ela. [10]

r/MadiaSnark was a subreddit about Brianna Madia, a Moab, Utah-based vanlife influencer. In March 2023, Madia posted a video describing how she was doxxed by users from the subreddit and stated that the subreddit made her suicidal. She then released the names of 25 snarkers from the subreddit and revealed her discovery in October 2021 that her then-husband, Keith, had posted in r/MadiaSnark. It was later taken down by moderators of the subreddit. [4] Lifestyle influencer Lily Chapman posted a series of videos about her experiences with snark content about her in 2024, in which she stated that she had nine separate snark pages dedicated to her and that they prompted her to pursue legal action. [11] The subreddit r/snarkingonthesnarkers was created to critique other snark subreddits for bullying and harassment. [1]

r/DuggarsSnark and fundie snark

r/DuggarsSnark, which was created to "snark" on the fundamentalist Baptist Duggar family of 19 Kids and Counting, became especially active when Josh Duggar (pictured), known as "the Pest" therein, was tried for child sexual abuse in 2021. Joshua Duggar 2007 cropped and retouched.jpg
r/DuggarsSnark, which was created to "snark" on the fundamentalist Baptist Duggar family of 19 Kids and Counting , became especially active when Josh Duggar (pictured), known as "the Pest" therein, was tried for child sexual abuse in 2021.

r/DuggarsSnark is a subreddit surrounding the Duggar family, the stars of the TLC reality television series 19 Kids and Counting . Posts often revolve around the family's fundamentalist Baptist beliefs, their promotion of purity culture, and members' negative experiences growing up or interacting with Christian fundamentalism. [12] The subreddit became particularly active during a December 2021 trial against Josh Duggar, whom the subreddit nicknamed "the Pest", for possessing child pornography. [13] The subreddit grew from 8,000 members at the beginning of 2021 to 135,000 by December, while its posts shifted toward empathy for victims of child sexual abuse. [14] The subreddit also organized a fundraiser for the Children's Safety Center of Washington County. [6] By June 2023, the subreddit had over 174,000 members. [3] Its popularity also led to the proliferation of other snark subreddits for "fundie"—a pejorative for Christian fundamentalist—influencers. r/FundieSnarkUncensored was started in 2020. It had over 169,000 members and was in the top one percent of subreddits by membership by December 2023. [3] Its members, as of 2023, are largely female and queer. [15]

Response and criticism

For The Guardian , Katy Kelleher wrote that, despite occasional commentary on snark subreddits about "the expectations that are placed upon women living in 21st-century America", "snarkers" are typically "just mean". [7] Emily Courter of Business Insider wrote that users of r/Blogsnark sometimes expressed admiration for influencers, but that the subjects of its posts were "often heavily criticized and arguably even trolled, which leads to concerns that these spaces have gone too far". [5] Business Insider also faced online controversy in late 2023 for posting a story about the underwear brand Parade in a snark subreddit from their Reddit account. For The Washington Post , Taylor Lorenz described "the vast network of snark subreddits" as "a thorn in [Reddit's] side" in 2023 due to their being "tied to stalking, doxing, and mob behavior" and for "frequently devolv[ing] into networked harassment against women". [1]

For NBC News, Kat Tenbarge wrote that, even if snark subreddits about "entire genres of influencers" like family channels and beauty YouTubers tended to be "more nuanced, newsy and speculative", snark subreddits about specific people could "often turn hateful". She also described r/Trishyland as "a coordinated harassment campaign" due to its members' attempts to involve themselves in Paytas's personal life while she was pregnant. Molly McAleer, a cofounder of HelloGiggles stated that snark subreddits about female influencers were "less about accountability and more about bullying, often over their target's appearance". [9] Annie Rauwerda wrote for Input that, because "gossip triggers the brain’s reward circuitry", there could be "positive, pro-social outcomes of shared snark", but that it had the potential to "go too far". She particularly criticized aspects of r/DuggarsSnark as being "invasive and cruel" and likened them to cyberbullying. [6]

Feven Merid of the Columbia Journalism Review wrote that, though snark subreddits "are not well moderated", "often get details wrong", and have posts that "sometimes engage in body shaming and bullying", snark subreddits are "often the only places taking a close inspection of how the [influencer] industry and its most successful figures operate". She added that they contain "dozens of threads" about influencers' deceptive posts and practices, expose how influencers earn money, and "can inform readers about online trends that they may not have realized were likely paid influencer campaigns", which allows Redditors to play "a role that mainstream journalists so far haven't been able, or willing, to." [2] Sophie Hayssen of Mother Jones wrote that subreddits like r/FundieSnarkUncensored could "play a key role in helping [ex-fundamentalists] reexamine their past beliefs", but that they could sometimes "go too far, moving from critique to bullying". [15]

Outside of Reddit, forums such as Get Off My Internets and Tattle Life have also been described as snark communities. [16] [10]

See also

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 "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.

<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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ellen Pao</span> American businesswoman (born 1970)

Ellen Kangru Pao is an American investor and former interim CEO of social media company Reddit.

Trisha Paytas is an American YouTuber, singer, and media personality. Her YouTube channel consists of a wide variety of content including lifestyle-oriented vlogs, music videos, and mukbangs. As of July 2022, she has accumulated roughly 5 million subscribers and almost 1 billion lifetime views.

Some communities on the social news site Reddit are devoted to explicit, violent, propagandist, or hateful material, and have been the topic of controversy, at times receiving significant media coverage. The founders of Reddit did not claim they intended the platform to be a "bastion of free speech", yet for a period of time allowed such communities to operate largely unrestricted. Eventually usage rules were instituted to allow for the ban of groups and members who promoted illegal activity, violence, personal information or image theft and exposure, shaming, racial or gender hatred, harassment, and extremist speech.

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.

This is a timeline of Reddit, an entertainment, social networking, and news website where registered community members can submit content, such as text posts or direct links, making it essentially an online bulletin board system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hilaria Baldwin</span> American yoga instructor, author and businesswoman (born 1984)

Hilaria Baldwin is an American yoga instructor, entrepreneur, podcaster, and author. She was the co-founder of a chain of New York-based yoga studios called Yoga Vida, and has released an exercise DVD and a wellness-focused book. Baldwin has been married to actor Alec Baldwin since 2012.

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.

Moses Hacmon is an Israeli collaborative artist, designer and photographer. He is best known for his work Faces of Water, a photography project focused on capturing the movement of water and for co-hosting the Just Trish Podcast with his wife, Trisha Paytas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aimee Knight</span> British politician and activist

Aimee Knight is a British transgender activist and former politician. She was a rising star in the Green Party and its equalities spokesperson. In 2018, her father, who had been her election agent, was convicted of raping a child and she was no-fault suspended during an investigation into safeguarding failures by the party. She subsequently joined the Liberal Democrats in 2019 and was suspended after tweets appeared on her fiance's account stating he fantasized about children having sex, which she attributed to hacking.

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 Hype House</span> Collective of TikTok and other social media creators

The Hype House is a collective of teenage TikTok personalities based in Moorpark, California as well as the name of the mansion in which some of the creators live. It is a collaborative content-creation house, allowing the different influencers and content creators to make videos together easily.

AskReddit, sometimes stylized as Ask Reddit or Ask Reddit..., is a subreddit on the website Reddit, where users can submit open-ended questions to which other users can then reply. The subreddit describes its focus as "to ask and answer questions that elicit thought-provoking discussions". As of July 2015, AskReddit was the most popular subreddit on all of Reddit, and as of September 2021, it has 33.5 million members. In November 2018, Kevin Wong of Complex wrote:

Reddit bills itself as the front page of the Internet. If one were to extend this metaphor, then AskReddit would be the headline splashed across the top of that front page, because there is nothing as consistently exciting, absorbing, and cringe-worthy as the posts on AskReddit.

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">Kat Tenbarge</span> American journalist

Kat Tenbarge is an American journalist, who is currently working as a tech and culture reporter for NBC News after previously working as a senior reporter at Insider. She specializes in reporting on internet culture and influencers, including her own views and commentary. Tenbarge has reported on several cases of sexual assault allegations against Internet personalities, and her work and views concerning internet culture are frequently cited in other publications.

r/antiwork is a subreddit associated with contemporary labor movements, critique of work, corporate capitalism 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. Cain had 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.

r/Feminism is a feminist political subreddit discussing women's issues. As of June 2020, it has 179,000 members. The subreddit discusses issues that impact women and minorities, including workplace abuse and harassment, rape, domestic abuse, pink tax, cultural appropriation, and representation. Users of r/feminism are similar to the users of r/MensLib, a men's liberation subreddit; and r/againstmensrights, a subreddit against r/MensRights. The subreddit sends people wanting to talk about men's issues to r/Masculism, which has been described as a "a comparably essentialist approach to feminism". About 54% of posts on r/Feminism are predominantly negative.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Lorenz, Taylor (December 1, 2023). "News outlets turn to Reddit as Musk's X descends into chaos". The Washington Post . Retrieved May 9, 2024.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Merid, Feven (March 25, 2024). "The Reddit pages that investigate influencers". Columbia Journalism Review . Retrieved July 30, 2024.
  3. 1 2 3 Mendez II, Moises (June 6, 2023). "How the New Duggar Family Docuseries Amplifies the World of Online Snark Communities". Time . Retrieved May 11, 2024.
  4. 1 2 3 Weiss, Geoff (May 8, 2023). "A van-life influencer has released the real names of Reddit users that made her life a living hell. But her quest for vengeance has made her a target once again". Business Insider. Retrieved May 13, 2024.
  5. 1 2 Courter, Emily (April 30, 2022). "A Reddit forum dedicated to 'snarking' on influencers is home to over 100,000 members — some think the community has gone too far". Business Insider . Retrieved May 11, 2024.
  6. 1 2 3 Rauwerda, Annie (December 14, 2021). "There's an entire Reddit community dedicated to hating on the Duggars". Input . Retrieved May 13, 2024.
  7. 1 2 Kelleher, Katy (March 9, 2020). "'It's so toxic': why we're addicted to mean online gossip about women". The Guardian . Retrieved May 9, 2024.
  8. ↑ McNeal, Stephanie (April 8, 2022). "Why People Can't Stop Making Up Theories About Hilaria Baldwin". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved May 9, 2024.
  9. 1 2 Tenbarge, Kat (August 28, 2022). "A famous internet troll is facing frightening harassment near due date". NBC News . Retrieved May 11, 2024.
  10. 1 2 Rawlings, Amber (February 29, 2024). "I'm a lurker on Tattle Life: Unpicking my obsession with snark". Hunger. Retrieved July 30, 2024.
  11. ↑ Sawyer, Charlie (June 4, 2024). "What is snarking? TikToker Lily Chapman reveals intense online harassment she's experienced on Reddit". Screenshot. Retrieved July 30, 2024.
  12. ↑ Weekman, Kelsey (December 15, 2021). "Critics are using the Josh Duggar trial to help deconstruct harmful beliefs: 'Dripping with the effects of purity culture'". In the Know . Retrieved May 13, 2024.
  13. ↑ Skinner, Paige (December 9, 2021). "How The Reddit Community That Makes Fun Of The Duggars Came Together During Josh Duggar's Child Sexual Abuse Imagery Trial". BuzzFeed News . Retrieved May 9, 2024.
  14. ↑ Bolin, Alice (December 20, 2021). "How a Josh Duggar Subreddit Became a Forum for Sexual Trauma". Jezebel . Retrieved May 9, 2024.
  15. 1 2 Hayssen, Sophie (December 11, 2023). "How former fundamentalists are finding healing on Reddit". Mother Jones . Retrieved July 30, 2024.
  16. ↑ Van Syckle, Katie (January 21, 2016). "'It put me on antidepressants': welcome to GOMI, the cruel site for female snark". The Guardian . Retrieved July 30, 2024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.