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Top Reddit Comments About Embarrassing Doctor Visits

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2Links to Threads

3Major Topics

1) Who Makes Up The Genre, and What Do They Use It For?2) What Do They Say?3) How Is It Formatted?4) How Do They Say It?5) How Is The Site Laid Out?

4Who Wants to Know about Embarrassing Doctor Stories?

The five posts, which all have to do with the most embarrassing doctor stories contain content submitted by a wide array of users. The top comment of the post that poses the question “Doctors of Reddit, what's the most awkward experience you've had with a patient during a regular checkup?” was made by a user “cecefoo” who has been a user for over a year but does not contribute a lot. However, one of the other top comments was made by a 9 month old account that has commented and posted incredibly often.

This pattern was seen throughout all of the askreddit posts. For example, in the “Reddit, what embarassing moments have you had in a doctor's office? Mine happened about ten minutes ago...” post, the user “Steelejaxon” has been a redditor for over 3 years, but this comment was one of first he ever made.

5Who uses Reddit? In a nutshell, all walks of life use Reddit. According to their about page, there were over 100 million unique

visitors just last month. Therefore the user base cannot be pinpointed as a specific demographic. This widespread use of reddit is what contributes to it success and popularity as a social and entertainment website.

However the users can be categorized by the subreddit they visit or contribute to. The users, called Redditors, typically post content in subreddits in which they are interested in. Redditors who contribute to the AskReddit subreddit all have a desire to

share, question or discuss. Those who comment on the posts have some sort of connection to the post. They either have a personal anecdote that relates or their own opinion on the question. This is why certain redditors (like Steelejaxon) who have not contributed in years feel compelled to answer certain threads.

6Ask Reddit Contributions The users that comment in the genre that is being analyzed,

which are the top comments about the most embarrassing doctor visits, typically contribute humorous stories. They are very light hearted and joking and that is due to the nature of the question. Most comments posted in this genre are not serious and are simply personal anecdotes. At first glance the purpose seems to be to just share stories and memories, and while that may be true for some, it is not true for all.

7Who Sees These Questions and Answers?

Quite literally, everyone. As you can see from the homepage of

Reddit, it automatically creates a front-page of the most popular

subreddits. Askreddit is one of these. So anyone who visits Reddit sees askreddit comments and posts whether they want to or not.

Essentially the readers are what influence the writers to post the

content that they do.

8They Explain It Best Themselves

The reason this genre is so full of humorous personal anecdotes is likely tied to the fact that users are given points for popularity of comments, and their identity is tied to their username. This concept what summarized best by user “douglasmacarthur” in his post to the subreddit, TheoryofReddit, which discusses how Reddit communities function and interact. Since Redditors have an identity in their username they are more

concerned about posting liked material. This explains the desire for the writers to be humorous in this genre.

By posting funny material and personal anecdotes that garner these internet points, these redditors feel a sense of worth and accomplishment and this is the main purpose behind the writers contributions. It is not to share their stories and lives, but mainly to feel liked and needed, a basic human desire.

9What Makes Up These Posts?

Content wise, the top comments in this genre are primarily made up of vulgar and disgusting stories. Since the genre has to do with embarrassing doctor visits, the thread essentially develops into who has the most embarrassing story. Unfortunately disgusting also seems to correlate to embarrassing in this context.

For example user “justhavingagoodtime” speaks to the time when he showed his bare rectum to his doctor in a grotesque story.

Even worse is jonnism’s lengthy and in depth explanation of how his intestinal tract was backed up with feces in a story that can make even those with the strongest stomachs succumb to the need to vomit.

10There Is Always the Odd One Out

However not all the content is disgusting, just a majority of it.

User “cecefoo” achieves the top comment without referencing genitalia or feces like most of the other top posts in the other 4 threads. Instead they speak to a simple, albeit creepy, story of how a man followed a woman into a checkup

Linds360 achieves a similar effect.

11Shock Value

The content of this new media genre is made up of such vulgar and disgusting thoughts because the writers think that it is what the readers want. Even though there are plenty of embarrassing things that could happen in a doctor’s office, without having to describe bowel movements or the like, somehow those are the posts that are most commonly upvoted

It’s the shock value that gets most redditors to upvote, they think to themselves “that’s so disgusting that it’s a great story”.

Basically in terms of content, redditors like to push the envelope in order to get themselves to stand out to readers. That is why most comments at the top of this genre can make you sick, because for reddit, the more extreme the comment the more successful the comment.

12Recylced Questions and Answers

Reddit commnets not only push towards extremes, but they are extremely formulaic. On a thread within TheoryofReddit, discussing Reddit’s pitfalls, MediumPace explains how a post that mirrors the popular opinion shoots up to the top. Reddit’s content is often recycled. In fact, that is the reason that this

very new media genre exists. It only exists because people constantly ask similar questions such as “what is your most embarrassing doctor experience.”

Therefore if the comments in this genre contain a vulgar story, then most likely It will be voted towards the top because it follows with the popular opinion that vulgarity correlates with embarrassment. The comments that follow the top ones are either supplementary stories or clever quips and supplementary puns and/or jokes.

13What Do They Look Like? Basically, the top

comments of these Reddit posts are blocks of text. It is not possible to embed pictures to Reddit, only to hyperlink to them. So the story is basically told solely via text. In FluCantus’s story, he has an introduction composed of a few lines, then a big brick of text which constitutes his story.

14Reddit’s Options

Reddit limits the amount of changes you can make to the text. You can basically do all simple operations, italicize, paragraph, underline, paragraph, etc. But it cannot do anything close to what a word processor does. So naturally the structure of the comments are limited which is what results in the type of comments seen (big sets of text).

15But Is That Really Why?

The limiting features to Reddit’s commenting system is not the only thing that is causing the cookie-cutter, lengthy paragraph structure in the top comments of the threads. In fact, the realm of possibilities with Reddit’s simple editor is quite vast. It is the constant desire to be liked. Again the content must be

popular among the readers and must be entertaining in the context of this genre. In order to do so the story must be well developed and detailed resulting in long stories.

The reason as to why the paragraphs are not broken up can be attributed to the fact that in order to paragraph on Reddit comments, special symbols must be used, and the general user base of Reddit likely do not know which symbols since it is not explicitly stated

16How Do Redditor’s Talk?

With as much vulgarity and profanity as possible. Many of the top comments from each of the 5 threads contained posts with swearing. They either use them extensively or sparingly, but they use them nonetheless. They primary reason for this is because in today’s society, frankly,

swearing is seen as cool. From what can be observed on the internet today there is no better way to get an emotion across than using a swear word. Redditors see them as so versatile and useful; they tend to insert them as much as possible. They seem to think throughout the genre, that the more curse words used the better the is. Perhaps it’s the idea that curse words and vulgarity increase the intensity of the story thereby possibly increasing their potential success.

17Studies Have Been Conducted

User “LinuxFreeOrDie” gathered data on Reddit comments for the use in the subreddit “TheoryofReddit” in a thread talking about whether the migration of many Digg users in 2004 is related to the declining linguistic quality of reddit comments. They found that over time the reading level of reddit comments, measured using various methods, has been dropping over time.

18Studies Have Been Conducted Furthermore, LinuxFreeorDie found that there has been a

dramatic increase of slang, insults, and swears over time.

19What Does This Mean?

The trend of poor linguistically crafted comments is indicative of the Reddit community caring less and less about content. They no longer care whether their content is linguistically sound and proper but just care that it is popular enough to get to the top. This has resulted in a clear increase of the use of swears and insults

and a clear decrease in the proper use of the English language.

20How Are The Comments Organized?

The comments on Reddit are organized linearly by rating. The organization system can be changed to display new comments or controversial comments first, but the default is to display the best and top comments first.

The comments are nested within each other so it is very easy to tell who is replying to whom, and the score of each comment.

21How Does This Influence Reader?

In this genre, considering it is a new media genre, speed and utility is everything. The reader must be able to move quickly and efficiently, and the design of these comment threads allow for that. The comments can be collapsed quickly and allow for you to jump from comment to comment with almost no effort. It is basically a prime example of an efficient and perfect hypertext. This allows the reader to go through hundreds of comments and posts in

almost no time at all. This general design relates to most other elements such as the linguistic quality, content, and purpose. The design has caused readers to scroll through comments very quickly, so the content has to be extreme, the language cannot be too formal and the purpose must be to simply grab attention if the writer wants the reader to pay any attention to the post. Therefore, due to the design of the comment page, the writers have altered their methodology of writing for this genre in order to cater towards the readers.

22Reddit Is a Vast Place, and This Genre Is Just the Surface. So Keep Exploring, and See What It’s All About!