The first rule of online journalism is: “Don’t read the comments!” (Well, it is at other outlets – we love reading yours.) Sometimes however, a forum will transcend the usual bickering and meme sharing to become something truly special – perhaps even legendary. Here are ten of those threads.
“Reddit, what is a legendary comment thread that everyone should read?” With this question, redditor myawesomeself opened the floor for the development of a Canon of Great Comment Threads. Some happened on Reddit, some on blogs, some on the Bodybuilding Forum. Here the top picks from this grand convocation.
Full Body Workout Every Other Day?
This is an argument about how many days are in a week.
Hey, you know what, it is bullshit that weeks are an odd number of days, and therefore doing something “every other day” means you’re doing it different days each week.
Also it is very hard to realise when to walk away from an argument on the internet, or when you have fucked up so hard that ten years later, you will be responsible for the most famously stupid forum thread on the internet.
It would take more time to read the thread than to watch this 18-minute video about it, made by sports writer and 17776 creator Jon Bois:
The Predictable Threads Are Driving Me Insane
If you’re not familiar with Reddit in general, skip this. But if you are — especially if you’re familiar with Reddit’s love for self-referential comments — this one’s a treat. Watch the whole GIF in the top post, and watch the GIFs in the comments too.
There’s a gimmick, which I won’t spoil, but which you’ll notice after reading a few of the comments. And then you’ll be amazed at this towering creative achievement. This is the Dark Side of the Moon of comment threads, a conceptual masterpiece in a modern medium.
This thread isn’t that atypical for r/HighQualityGifs, which is always full of GIFs and threads about Reddit itself, which make fun of Reddit’s foibles in a pretty light and self-effacing tone.
How did you take that picture?
Redditor Saend takes a picture of his wrist tattoos, and adds “Please don’t ask me how I managed to take this picture.” Someone asks. Saend shows them in a new picture. Repeat. Repeat. By the end, Saend is surrounded by cameras and mirrors, and everyone is impressed.
Landlord stopped by and is acting loopy. Halp!
In this thread from the North American Subaru Impreza Owners Club (!), user Fubar’D reports that their new landlord showed up drunk and asked to sleep and shower in their home. Things got complicated from there.
Fubar’D posts live updates about the incident and its aftermath, including calls to the realtor and landlord. The thread ran for three years, but is now only partly recoverable from the Wayback Machine. In the “legendary threads” thread, redditor Peeping_Kyle helpfully condenses the poster’s answers to various people’s questions and comments. And redditor think_with_portals finds a tragic epilogue.
TIFU by reading my wife’s text messages. She’s cheating on me (aka Jenny the Cheating Wife)
There’s a whole subreddit, r/TIFU, for stories about making a huge mistake. And the most famous is the story of Jenny the Cheating Wife. User MyLifeSuxNow discovered that his wife of eight years was cheating on him, and that his sister-in-law might know. He gave Reddit lots of juicy details about his wife’s sexts and his own sexual performance. Then he hired a divorce lawyer and a private detective and set up a long sting to catch Jenny. And he kept updating Reddit for about a week.
This one’s a bit of a project. The original poster, MyLifeSuxNow, deleted their threads and their account. There was a whole thread of drama and updates about this deletion. The link above is a set of screencaps of the original posts, created on a dedicated subreddit called r/MyLifeSuxNow, which is full of more drama. Apparently the guy tried to licence out his life story, and either got into trouble with the subreddit mods, or got other people in trouble with the mods? I really don’t have time to untangle this, and neither do you, but don’t let that stop you. Be sure to spend an hour or two figuring out whether this guy’s entire story is made up.
TIFU by throwing my steak out a window
Man and wife go to wife’s boss’s house for dinner. The steak is underdone. Man deals with this in the silliest way. Man pays for his mistake.
This Seinfeldian, no-one-gets-hurt fuckup story is fun enough on its own, but it’s also followed by comments full of ways this guy could have saved face. The guy keeps replying that, yep, these all would have been smarter solutions than what he chose! What a champ.
But the real joy is that years later, the wife posted her side of the story. And she tells it well. This is our generation’s Rashomon.
The Art War of ShittyWatercolour and AWildSketchAppeared
Under a video of some annoying Viner pushing his sister into a pool, two beloved Reddit artists trade illustrations in their signature styles. Each picture is a one-up of the one that came before it, like a nerdy artist rap battle. Someone even “kept score” with a vote count.
Honorable Mentions
- Clubbers of Reddit, what are your best tips for people new to clubbing?: The joke is, everyone pretends to misinterpret the question.
- TIFU by stuffing my face with edibles before dinner with my wife’s parents: A cute stoner story, but the comments aren’t particularly interesting.
- I’m drunk. Ama: An exemplary r/drunk thread, where a drunk poster has multiple conversations with himself, including stating, then confirming, the size of his own dick.
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