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Brandon Dickens
Enc 2135-37
September 22, 2015
What is Reddit?
There are many different styles of writing, as there are also many different ways to
express oneself. Over time, these variations in style became known as genres, and these genres
developed and branched off into sub-genres and smaller, more specific pieces. When Reddit was
created in July of 2005, it was designed to essentially be an online bulletin board, but as it
developed and increased in popularity, it has formed many tight-knit communities inside the
walls of Reddit. Subreddits, genres within Reddit, are designed to give specific information on a
particular subject, and although one composition may share aspects with multiple genres, they
can still be categorized and defined by their genre. Genres are flexible and can contain a large
variety of different styles which still fulfill the genres requirements. Along with these genres
formed genre conventions, which is what the audience began to expect and appreciate from work
within a genre.
Communities in Reddit exist due to the features of subreddits that attract people in as
they come together sharing common characteristics or interests. Communities can form under a
variety of circumstances and have completely different purposes, ranging from celebrating their
favorite popstar, to talking about situations and examples of police officers ignoring the rights of
a suspect, to almost any video game on the market. Communities will grow or diminish rapidly
based on the popularity or advertising of a common interest.

When most people think of genres, they tend to think of the most common, obvious
examples such as those found it literature and music. However, genres play a much bigger role in

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everyones life as they are present everywhere, including: food, movies, television shows, and
video games. The amazing part of Reddit is that it embodies all of these genres and its content is
unlimited. Although Reddit does contain communities focused on talking about food and recipes,
due to its digital platform and the general age of people it attracts, the most popular communities
on Reddit appeal to 15-25 year old males. With an understanding of the audience, it is obvious
that a popular community in Reddit will be based around video games. As the case with all types
of genres, video games possess multiple sub-genres which are composed of numerous amounts
of individual pieces. For example, a common genre in the gaming world is the shooter, which
can be broken down into first person, third person, tactical shooter, massively multiplayer online
first person shooter, and many more. These sub-genres each contain a broad community of fans
of that style of game. Along with these sub-genre communities, specific games will attract a large
community of their own, usually depending on the competiveness of the game, or if the game is
a popular series.
Reddit communicates through digital, text-based posts which often include videos or
pictures to add to or provide ethos to the topic of the post. Each subreddit is essentially an online
bulletin board in which any member of the community can create a post and receive feedback
from other members. Most subreddits have clearly stated rules in regards to what can and cannot
be posted and is moderated to ensure these rules are followed. These rules exist to ensure that the
posts follow the genre conventions of the subreddit and appeal to the community. Posts are
limited to topics that relate to the subreddit and provide interesting, humorous, or important
information that should be known throughout the community. When creating a post, it is
important to understand the audience, as it could be anyone remotely interested in the

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community and one irrelevant or negative post could prevent them from later becoming members
of the community.
Most posts are guided by a combination of rhetorical appeals including: pathos, ethos,
and logos. The author will use different appeals depending on the purpose of his post; if he is
trying to entertain the audience and make them laugh, he could use pathos. However, pathos can
also be used in other purposes, such as persuasion, specifically to try to join the community
together on a certain issue in order to attract the attention of the developer. Logos and ethos can
also be used for persuasion or for creating posts designed to help other members performances
in a particular field.
Often times, developers will look to their games subreddit to understand what the
community enjoys and what they want changed in order to further please their customers. For
example, it is not uncommon for a Riot employee, the company that created League of Legends,
to comment on a post pertaining to an issue or in-game bug. Reddit provides for a digital
platform for communication between consumer and producer, and can mutually benefit both
parties. It provides not only a platform for entertainment and education, but also one that can
raise awareness towards a particular issue that needs to be addressed.
Over half a million subreddits exist on Reddit with hundreds more being created every
single day. Although not all of these contain active communities and some probably havent had
a new post for a few months, they all were created due to an interest in a particular field which
can be shared by readers. Looking at the statistics provided by reddit, we can assess the
differences of genres according to their popularity and understand how some communities exist
as a part of larger communities.

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The general gaming subreddit has 8.5 million subscribers. Individual games could be
considered micro genres under the blanket of gaming but even the most popular games dont
reach close to the attention that the gaming subreddit achieves. Some of the most popular
games today are, League of legends, Minecraft, Dota 2, Pokemon, and Hearthstone, each
attracting a significant amount of attention with 700,000; 440,000; 229,000; 444,000; 253,000
subscribers respectfully but dont even come close to the 8.5 million of the gaming subreddit.
Although r/gaming is a much broader subreddit and therefore it would make sense that it
attracts a much larger audience that is not the only thing causing this discrepancy. As a member
of the r/leagueoflegends subreddit, it is obvious that a huge part of the League of Legends
community would have no interest in joining the subreddit. This community exist for the purpose
of sharing clips and memories for entertainment purposed and also educational texts to help
improve the skill or knowledge of the reader. However, if the reader cannot understand the
language of the community, he would gain no benefit from it. A significant portion of the League
of Legends fan base exists outside of North America and most of them do not speak English.
Since the subreddit consist of English texts and videos, most people who do not speak English
will not take the time or have the ability to find the subreddit and have the text and audio
translated. League of Legends breaks the barriers of language and allows for a huge community
to join together with a common interest, outside of reddit a community that will rarely be
experienced in a face-to-face environment and is entirely based on an interest of a game on the
internet. Although composed of many different languages, all can watch and enjoy the game as
27 million people tuned into the League of Legends World Championship in 2014. It is very
interesting how someone in North America can be playing the same game, at the same time, as
someone halfway around the world in Korea and can share that connection with them, that

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interest and communality with them. When fans and players of League of Legends gather
together in community they do so to promote the game and find entertainment through it. As
fans, it is always exciting to see an interest grow and evolve. This benefits the community
because the more money the company makes, the more money they are able to put into the game
to make improvements and changes in order to enhance the experience and attract more attention
as the process repeats itself.
Reddits use of text-based, multimedia posts are very effective as readers consistently
revisit the site for more. Posts on Reddit are effective due to the community conventions and the
interest shared between members of the community. Most members of a community will not
click on every post they see on their communitys page, but instead scroll through and decide
which ones seem most interesting to them. This is beneficial because it gives everyone freedom
to experience what they want to. Although two members of the same community may share that
interest in common, they might be particularly interested in different aspects of the community
and have no desire to read information on other portions.
According to Reddit, over 3.6 million redditors visited the site last month (August, 2015)
as it powered 9,330 communities. Reddit also claims to have received over 202 million unique
visitors last month alone. This shows that a large majority of the people who use Reddit monthly
are not involved in any communities but instead view the home page or lurk communities. This
is important for communities like r/leagueoflegends to realize because their opportunity for
growth is immense and they should try to be newcomer friendly. As communities develop, the
language of the community will change has more jargon and inside jokes will be used, making it
harder for newcomers to understand and find a place within this community.

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Although the communication used on Reddit is quite effective shown through the
massive numbers the site pulls in, there is room for improvement in communities in order to
achieve more growth and interest more readers. For example, every Monday r/leagueoflegends
creates a megathread in which they encourage members of the community to ask questions about
the game or the community in a judgment-free thread. This gives an opportunity for newer,
inexperienced players to ask questions that veteran players may be able to answer. These posts
are important because they help new players understand the game and feel welcomed into the
community. Negative replies to questions are usually deleted relatively fast by an admin to
ensure a positive experience for newcomers and to allow them to feel more comfortable in the
community. This can be improved by having these threads more often as most of the times
people will have frequent questions, a lot more than just once a week. Its also important that the
other posts are also newcomer friendly and are not full of sarcastic replies when someone wants
to know something. When a community is friendly and welcoming, viewers will be much more
likely to want to join, and when there are over 200 million viewers on Reddit each month, there
is a lot of room for growth in every community.
Genres have a much bigger impact in everyday life than what one would expect if they
were unfamiliar with what a genre really was. When most people hear genres, they tend to think
of music and movies, but genres can include any type of composition that can possess multiple
characteristics. A genre is a compositions kind, category or sort and can be expressed in many
ways. With the recent progress in technology, most compositions and communities are digitally
based. As a result, most media has upgraded from the old-fashioned print, to digital pieces. This
means that the mode in which the viewers experience the composition is more often than not
visual and/or audio based. In some communities, such as fraternities and sororities, face-to-face

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is still a regular medium, but in most communities, face-to-face interaction is rare and sometimes
even weird. As technology increasingly develops and new generations are born, new media that
was previously only an idea or theory could now be a completely functional form of
communication. Holographic communication could become a normal thing for everyday middle
class families and new genres and communities could be born.

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Works Cited

Braziller, Amy, and Elizabeth Kleinfeld. "Chapter 1." The Bedford Book of Genres: A Guide &
Reader. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.
"Tracking the Top 5000 Subreddits." Redditlist. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Sept. 2015.
"We Power Awesome Communities." Reddit.com: About Reddit. N.p., 15 Sept. 2015. Web. 21
Sept. 2015.