I’ve been poking around Reddit a little more lately, and found myself gawking at /AmIOverreacting, a Reddit in which people post their scenarios and ask whether things are actually bad or whether they’re just overreacting.
The sub seems to be full of very similar posts: mostly women posting screencaps of texts between themselves and their boyfriends in which their boyfriends are next-level shitty to them.
On the one hand, it reminds me a lot of the weirdo(s) who come here every month or so with a fake relationship story asking for advice: always young women, always geared for maximum sympathy. It may be that the sub is populated mostly by trolls.
On the other hand, I don’t want to be that guy who’s like, naw, women, you’re making up how shitty men are, that can’t possibly be true.
So what say y’all: are there really this many dudes who are really this shitty in this way, or is it a hoax, or somewhere in between?
If there are 20 million or so males between the ages of 18 and 28 and 1% of them are shitty that makes maybe 200,000 shitty males–and thus 200,000 plus possible stories of shitty behavior.
Men can definitely be that shitty. That stuff is pretty much the norm in abusive relationships. When people describe their ex as being “emotionally abusive,” this is what they mean.
And women can definitely doubt their own judgment about whether it’s really that shitty. To some extent we are socialized not to trust our own judgment about things.
It’s also pretty culturally normative for women to ask their friends about whether their take on a situation is accurate.
reddit is skewed toward people complaining about stuff, so you’re not going to hear the stories about the not-shitty men, you are by default, in a sub like that, going to hear the worst stories, possibly even embellished a little. And yes, I’m sure some of those are trolls.
But you might be surprised about how awful some people can be to their partners.
And women can be extremely shitty as well. Shitty behavior in a relationship is not limited by sex or sexual orientation. But men wouldn’t be allowed to have such a subreddit; it’d get shut down right away.
That’s demonstrably false. I mentioned the bulk of the threads, but there are plenty of threads there from men about their wives. C’mon.
Edit: I just noticed the edit of the thread title. I’m gonna ask if it can be modified, because the sub isn’t just about “men being shitty to women”; when I say it’s “full of” that, I don’t mean it’s “only” that.
Thanks, that’s helpful. It all just sounds so ridiculously over-the-top to me. I know that both my wife and I would instantly nope out of the relationship if either of us talked to the other in the way that people regularly text each other in that sub.
Sample from one of the top threads there now, a tiny bit of a long text thread like this:
It’s just difficult for me to wrap my head around people not treating this sort of communication as instantly and irrevocably disqualifying.
But the world is full of things that are hard for me to wrap my head around.
I used to post in forums for (mostly) mothers of small children. So many stories about unsupportive partners. We had this guy posting about his unsupportive wife, he got plenty of support. Then he posted again. He said he made everything up and his wife found what he posted, and he was now apologizing but that he made it up because he couldn’t stand to see so many negative examples of men being shitty partners and wanted to “balance the scales.”
Ah, that’s your problem. (I kid, I kid. And also I’m writing from the perspective of someone who is addicted to Reddit and spends way more time there than I should.)
There are dudes who are really that bad. But at the same time it’s well-known that a lot of Reddit posts are made-up and a lot of these “advice” communities are populated by trolls, as you say. And the more outrageous and sympathy-boosting the posts are, the more people have sympathy and the more karma they can farm, so in some sense the way that Reddit is designed encourages it. (More “meta” subs like r/BestOfRedditorUpdates tend to point out discrepancies in the stories as well as odd commonalities between stories. E.g. if a lot of stories are being posted involving a girl who owns her own house that an evil step-parent tries to kick her out of (an actual example where several variants of this popped up at around the same time), that is a sign that most of them, at least, are probably made up…
I don’t even read Reddit, but I’m pretty sure there are whole “red pill” subreddits full of men basically saying that all women are abusive. I can’t imagine that there aren’t places on Reddit for a guy to complain about a particular woman being abusive to him.
Anyway, i feel like the very first response answered the question:
There are a lot of people out there. If you create a place just for people to complain about shitty behavior, you will attract lots of real examples. (And some trolls, of course.)
Reddit will surface some of the most outlandish true stories you can possibly imagine.
Reddit will also surface some of the best-crafted hoaxes you can possibly imagine.
Both of these situations are true on all the true-advice boards. You are correct to wonder whether they’re hoaxes, because that’s not unusual. Personally I find it’s better to leave the troll-spotting to others who have more forum-specific experience.
I will say that there’s a population of misogynist trolls that leave a fairly predictable fingerprint in style and theme. The “nice guys finish last” trope is common, overwrought, and fairly easily spotted.
Yup. I used to read AITA (am I the asshole) and it was fairly obvious that a lot of posts were creative writing exercises. Sometimes people investigate the OP, and find they have written similar posts about a completely different situation in the past.
I follow a woman on TwitteX who was permanently banned from Reddit for fake posts in these subreddits. Now she’s a (non-troll) Substacker who writes about relationships and parenting.
I get the impression its both. I’m honestly not trying to be political, but 77 million people happily voted for a rapist and felon who is also probably a child molester to be president. Theres a lot of shit people out there.
Like others have said, even if only 30% of men are shit people, thats a lot of shit men out there.
Keep in mind about ~10% of men suffer from either anti-social personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder. And those are just 2 illnesses that make you extremely toxic. There are endless toxic people out there.
But I have noticed trends where people will post rage bait on reddit. Sometimes they get called out because you can tell from the messages that the person is texting themselves by the way the messages are formatted.
I grew up in an abusive family, and it’s insane what my father did to us, including my mother.
It’s also insane that my mother didn’t leave him. They did separate for a while when I was in high school, but the church and others encouraged my mother to take him back.
My sister also married a really controlling asshole and while we all knew he was shitty, she hid all the problems until after her divorce.
But, as others say, a lot of the what is posted is made up. I watch YouTube shorts sometimes and various things pop up, such as relationships, things at work, etc.
It’s obvious that a lot of these things are made up.
There is. It’s r/AITAH. It’s not just straight women, but straight men too, and LGBT folks as well, on top of other AITAH kinds of situations, like one I saw yesterday: “AITAH for getting mad at my friends for trying to feed my dog chocolate?” If that’s real (I’ve gotten a good nose for fake AITAH stories) that people are not his friends, and trying to poison a pet is NOT a prank.
Oh, heck, I’ve seen obviously fake letters to Dear Abby and her ilk.
There are lots of reddit forums which are well known for being more “creative” than factual.Any forum whose main theme is embarrassing stories is probably suspect.
For example:
TIFU (today I fucked up. )
LegalAdvice ( esp. posts about family problems,)
I can never tell the difference when it’s a hoax because I’ve seen so much crazy shit that anything is plausible to me. And I’m painfully gullible.
I actually didn’t trust my own judgement for a long time. I would frequently go to my husband and ask him if my impression was correct. I still do sometimes but not as often. So it seems totally plausible that someone else would do this.
And sometimes, like, we just need to be told again. How many times have I come here just to post, “I shouldn’t talk to my Mom, right?”
It’s like cognitively you know this person is terrible but emotionally you need to be told. Sometimes repeatedly.
Especially in the context of emotional abuse, part of the abuse is making you doubt yourself. And they do it intentionally. If they can get you to question your own judgement about what’s happening, it’s so much easier for them to abuse you.
If you’re complaining on Reddit then you’re overreacting. If you’re writing about it on Reddit because you actually need help then it could be under reacting.
Here’s the thing about subs like /r/amioverreacting or /r/amitheasshole. There are pretty much only two categories of people who post there:
People who very clearly are not overreacting and are not the asshole, and who want validation
Trolls who make up stories where they very clearly ARE overreacting or assholes in order to start a shitstorm.
The only other group of posters are posters who think they are in group 1 but actually are incredibly unsympathetic. And those are the people who make those subs somewhat entertaining.
What about people who think the other party was the asshole, and are telling the story from the other party’s perspective to try to get a load of “yes you were the asshole” Does that happen?