A Comprehensive Categorization of Reddit Ragebait 

I’m seated. The theater employees are scared and asking me to leave because it’s ‘a RU-vid video, you can watch at home’ but I’m simply too seated

NOT CBAT FOR CENSORING OMG 😭😭😭😭😭

When I saw the "Mother in law" trope, the biggest smile came across my face. The dramatic fake in-laws trope has to be my favorite. It reminds me of the indian dramas I used to watch when I was younger lmao. The way the mothers are so cartoonishly evil and the way the characters talk to each other feels like something out of a netflix drama.

never forget that Oppa Homeless Style originated from a subReddit about Tumblr cringe or something and was never a real Tumblr fake story. sidenote please do this with Tumblr fake stories next

Did NOT expect you to list off the content warnings like that one countries song

The ragebait on Reddit was so obvious to me once I saw that the intended "assholes" in almost every story happen to be little kids, sometimes even babies under a year old, disabled people, pregnant women, people struggling with very bad illnesses, inmigrants, foreigners, vegans, etc. Of course anyone can be an asshole, but since I've noticed the pattern of who the asshole is supposed to be on these stories I stopped believing everything I read.

i appreciate that you deal with youtube's censorship by just censor-beeping the word, rather than replacing it with some absurd substitute. i'm so tired of people saying shit like "seggs" and "unalive".

Was NOT expecting Yakko's Trigger Warnings at the beginning

I love how her outfit becomes increasingly more disheveled as the video progresses 😭

i saw a misgendering freakout post on r/doordash once that was the most reasonable shit ever. the person politely corrected the op (delivery driver) on their pronouns and the driver politely corrected themself, and then went on reddit and acted like this was a horrible crime. and everyone in the comments agreed. that's when i left that subreddit

Sampleop has so much going on in their life..

One thing I have become absolutely certain of over my years of being chronically online is that most every moral panic/stupid discourse about like gay or neurodivergent or leftist or whatever topic started as a reddit or 4chan or kiwifarms ragebait/trolling operation. It’s really hard to get younger people in those communities to ignore the bait and move on and right wing grifters loveeeee picking up on these for there own benefit.

36:22 The Beanie Baby example made me laugh. Especially because there is a real life photo of a divorced couple splitting up Beanie Babies.

my favorite type M post was one about an argument over a "fictional character" where it was later revealed that OP was lying about everyone's age and had gotten in a discord slapfight with their fellow middle schoolers about the dream SMP

I was going to start this and watch it in pieces throughout the week on my work breaks but then I accidentally just watched the entire thing start to finish in one sitting

Even worse, half the ragebait today is bots copying old posts, which is in itself enraging! (also i love the squeak sound effect when you curse, it's so cute)

I feel like you just compiled the internets Grimm fairy tales. Like I used to see the internet as a library, but now I see it as being able to speedrun walking up to a stranger in the woods and listening to his wild tale by campfire

Under pets, you missed "fake service animal". Surprised that it didn't come up in the search! It's when someone either tries to pass off an obviously untrained dog as their service dog, or tries to bring some other animal everywhere with them under the excuse of "emotional support animal" (which AFAIK is not legally a thing anywhere)

In college I wrote an essay for my writing capstone called something like *The Social Function of r/AmITheAsshole* basically discussing the societal role of AITA as a genre. If this video had existed back then I absolutely would have quoted and cited it.

There was one I saw once that was literally just a children's book plot. It was like "AITA for causing my friend to shave her head because she keeps copying me?" and only like one or two other people in the comments pointed out that it was just the plot to Stephanie's Ponytail by Robert Munsch

This was fantastic!!!! **suggested category I've seen a lot of: tampered food. mostly consisting of 1. someone trying to sneak meat into a vegan/vegetarian OP's food OR 2. someone trying to feed someone their allergen to "test" OP's allergy or force them to "build tolerance" OR 3. someone is repeatedly trying to sneak something disliked or gross into OP's food

I (35, M), my girlfriend (33, F), her brother (33, M), and my best friend from college (36, M) were all bored one day so we decided to hijack a rocket ship and take a trip into space. Everything was going smoothly until we were exposed to strange cosmic radiation. When we landed, we realized that we developed fantastic new abilities. I could stretch my body into any form, my girlfriend could turn invisible and create force fields, and her brother could turn into a blaze of fire and fly into the air. However my best friend from college got a new rocky body, which he hated. He said that he “made him feel like a monster” and “I can’t pilot a plane like this!” I told him that it was an accident and hew knew the risks. He said that it was my fault for bring him along something so dangerous. AITA?

‘And not algorithmically nuke my channel’ Li I cannot tell you how excited I was when I saw the title

Finally. I feel like I’m going crazy with how often there are posts with 20k upvotes that are CLEARLY FAKE ragebait yet everyone takes seriously. Ugh. Like at this point just make a “fake story rage” subreddit, like r/nosleep so we can have fun. I love the idea of creating a tvtropes for this shit so people are aware. Hopefully this’ll help people 😭😭

When I first came across the subreddit, AITA posts legitimately made me worry that everyone other than me was living in a cinderella hellish landscape where step-families just hate you and abuse you constantly. Or that its unrealistic, and the worst thing in the world that only horrible monsters would want, for a step parent who raised you since you were three to want to be considered your mother/father.

"Unreasonable asexual" is still pretty rare just because asexuality isn't that well known, but I've noticed it starting to pop up in toxic romance and dead bedroom stories

micro categories for trans: trans sibling steals intended baby name of op or chooses the same name as op. usually a sibling.

RPG horror stories is an absolute goldmine for all of this. Honestly if stories on there didn’t already fit into so many of these categories just with a D&D coat of paint, I’d say rpg rage bait could be a category all its own. Subcategories for bad DMs and bad players, controlling partners, entitled friends, and lot and lots of extremely over the top creep stories.

One sub category for Death would be "Funeral Misbehaving." For example: "AITA for going to my ex mistress's funeral?" "AITA for playing a fart noise on my phone as my dad's coffin was being lowered?"

What a fascinating rabbit hole. Honestly the "my mother in law keeps pestering me and my husband does nothing" and "my family refused to attend my wedding if theres' no alcohol" are both such common shitty situations in life that I'm inclined to believe they're exceptions and most of them are genuine posts. Might be a cultural thing but where I live, I keep seeing people encounter that.

Poop cancer reddit story proves that art isn't dead on the modern internet

Li getting progressively more disheveled throughout the video really just enhances the whole experience

mini trope: absurdly tragic, where bad things keep getting piled onto one character-- ex: teen mom is left at the alter by abusive boyfriend, gets her baby kidnapped by unreasonable family member, and then gets cancer and dies in a car crash on the way to custody battle.

Big fan of learning more about ragebait (I've seen an influx of it recently), but my lizard brain saw the thumbnail and went "TALLY HALL?!"

Aside from the obvious bigotry bait ("oh, x-ism is okay because [insert marginalized person here] was a big jerk"), one wonders why these people don't just write soap operas.

Big win for critical thinking and media literacy today

You’ve missed one sub-branch of Last wishes ignored/ inheritance dispute: when the last wish of the dying is to give all their money to their (still small) kid, but one or multiple older family members decide to take the money instead; which the kid usually only finds out about once they’re about to go off to college

the comprehensiveness. the cbat censor. the yakko warner trigger warning. the slowly disintegrating fit. any time you made a reference in your explanations it killed me. li speaks more like li ATE

Idiot tourist story that I witnessed was an American lady asking a Mexican store clerk how much something cost in "real money." Reddit didn't exist back then but this was amazing

One thing I always find fascinating is that the vast majority of posts on these subreddits can be real, but they never get half the up votes of the fake stories because they’re often confusing rambles with no structure. Because your average person sucks at explaining stories in writing, and life is rarely as simple as it is in stories. Storytelling is a craft. Because of this, people have a hard time wading through it, leading to confusion/swiping away and even the belief that the post is fake. I see this especially with the r/helpme subreddit. God I feel so bad for the people on there. Absolutely desperate. But people get zero help because most of their points are confusing or not interesting, and therefore get little views or comments. In sharp contrast to the thousands people scrambling to support and help whatever cheated on father/mother is asking for support this week on r/aita or something. I also love the clarification that just because something CAN happen to someone, that doesn’t mean that these stories are real. I often see comments going “well my mother in law harassed me so there’s a chance this is real,” ignoring the fact that everything else about the story fits so cleanly into the ragebait formula. And like “they’re co-opting your trauma for Internet points” is such a perfect way to put it. Because it’s not like these experiences don’t happen to people, like fiction is based on reality, but that doesn’t mean these stories aren’t trying to provoke you for engagement, influence your world view, or that these stories are necessarily real (especially in conjunction with how neat everything is). They’re co-opting real stories for ragebait, often to push a worldview. Reminds me a lot of Sarah Z’s complicated video on tumblr fake stories.

The “evil homophobic family member(s)” vs “ good accepting family member(s)” stories are ones I enjoy despite knowing how fake they are 😫😭

The fact that I didn’t realize these weren’t real Reddit posts until the one about removing ladders from the pool is proof of how accurate this video is

This video inspired me to write the rules for a fictional subreddit called "r/FanFicAITA" where it's just fanfic of characters posting to "r/AITA" since AITA is mostly fictional stories anyway. Not... that I'm ever going to actually make a subreddit for that, but I thought it'd be a fun idea.

The best Reddit fake stories are from paranormal subreddits. Like yes Reddit, give me my weird knocking sounds and lights flickering and seeing weird shadows!! Edit: I liked this video so much, I think it would be interesting to see a paranormal version! Some ideas for the categories and subcategories: - Shadow people - Peeking ghost - Definitely sleep paralysis - Weird dreams - Electrical issues - Orbs - Experiences that involve a creature/entity from a culture OP has probably not researched enough (very common with w*ndigo and s*inw*lker posts)

i hope these threads now have an influx of comments like "2BS" "1M"

I'm so thankful you took the time and effort to dissect this topic for us. As someone with multiple marginalized identities, it's painful o see stories meant to smear public perception of people like me proliferate all over the Internet. I'd hate to come across someone with views corrupted by Reddit posts, someone who only views me as a derivative caricature to be vilified rather than a nuanced human being. Videos like these are big steps in the progression of media literacy and critical thinking, especially when presented with a such a sharp wit! Bravo!

that content warning was ART

poor SampleOP, they have such a stressful life 😢

Screw the posts, can we talk about how utterly unhinged the rules/mods are? There'a rule against posting about interpersonal conflict, against posting asking if your feelings make you an asshole, one forbidding about posting about bodily autonomy, one against posting about abuse. All the rules are stupid and vague and are routinely broken. But the mods constantly delete GOOD posts that are getting engagement, and arbitrarily enforce these completely subjective rules when their fee-fees get hurt or they disagree with someone. I VERY politely DMed the mods asking for clarification on a rule and they were SO incredibly rude I was genuinely embarrassed for them, which is really, really saying something, as most reddit mods are fairly awful.

would like to add to unreasonable abled person: the “handicap spot” where the disabled OP is accused of not needing a handicap parking spot, often by old people. i would bet a good number of them are true unfortunately but i see this one a lot. very specific but could be broadened to “you’re not disabled” ; also to unreasonable minority, there’s the unreasonable picky eater (often overlapping with unreasonable autistic) especially when the picky eater is described as being spoiled or has an incredibly specific restriction.

So, my main subreddit of choice is BORU--best of redditor updates--which is exclusively about OPs who posted updates after taking the advice of AITA, relationship advice, etc. This is also a hotbed of ragebait and fake stories because people will post their fake stories, and then continue the saga for more internet points. Most of your categories have encapsulated the posts on BORU, but if I may have some suggestions: 1) The Tator Tot switcheroo. A woman has a great relationship with her boyfriend or husband, who presents himself as a feminist and liberal, and supports his girlfriend/wife/female partner's career. Then, the male partner either starts listening to Andrew Tate, and either starts demanding the female partner acts as a "high value woman" (ex, she leaves her high-paying executive job to be a stay-at-home-wife) or begins enacting Andrew Tate's advice (ex, negging his partner so she won't leave him). Bonus points if the female partner is the main breadwinner, and the Tator Tot is unemployed, but not a stay at home husband who does chores/looks after the children. Bonus bonus points as when the female partner leaves, the Tator Tot then breaks down and begs for his ex back. I'd argue this is separate from the "baby switchup" because this is specifically about someone drastically changing their values due to an outside influence (Andrew Tate/his clones) as opposed to a specific event (a baby being born). 2) The Evil StepChild. While this does overlap with the Benevolent Step-Parent, where the stepparent is kind, loving, and follows boundaries, it specifically has the step-children aggressively rejecting not only any attempts of "being a family", but any attempts at a peaceful co-existence with the step-parent. This can be either long term (i.e., the child has always rejected their step-parent) or an acute incident (i.e., the step-parent and step-child previously had a good relationship, but the reintroduction of a biological, usually deadbeat, parent resulted in the step-child rejecting their parent). 3) Under the "unreasonable minorities", the "unreasonable abuse victim". This is when the subject of the post is very clearly being abused by someone, and said abuse is coloring their interactions with others. This is *not* when someone seems to act unreasonably and then is later revealed to have been abused; this is specifically when the OP knows or could reasonably assume this relationship is abusive, but does not seem to account for how that abuse could influence the abuse victim's interactions with others. Also, I would suggest renaming "Pop Psych Narcissism" to "Pop Psych Personality Disorder". While accusations of narcissism definitely are the most popular, I think bait about people with bipolar personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder can also be put under the PPN umbrella.

My favourite micro category of 'Name Shaming' is 'Fictional Character Name Shaming'. Godspeed to all the Daeneryses out there.

This was great and all but I lost focus because there wasn't any bad Subway Surfers footage playing in the background while text to speech tells me about how OP's wife kidnapped the beanie babies and her mother is making her burn them so they can spread the ashes in Disneyworld

This was hilarious. Before I quit reading Reddit I noticed the ‘angelic OP’ thing for sure- either the title makes OP seem like a monster then the text has them behaving angelically, or the title is the most innocuous thing possible and it turns out the OP kicks puppies as a hobby. Both are equally fake and possibly also fetish bait.

The fact that you used that one song to censor curse words is legitimately one of the funniest things ever lmfao

killing two birds with one stone: avoiding saying child abuse and rhyming with misogyny by using “poor treatment of progeny” was genius

My brain doesn't think that someone lies, cuz my brain doesn't understand why anyone would tell a lie or make something up

On the infidelity topic, shoutout to that one story about the wife who suspected her husband was having an affair but he was actually just secretly a huge hatsune miku fan

I think the thing that makes it hard for people to work out how many Reddit stories are really fake is that human behavior is extremely varied so that even the most implausible stories could be true- especially if they involve only a few people or a closed group (imo this is less true when it’s like, a group of strangers clapped after I did a cool thing!! but when it’s about interpersonal relationships or one person being odd or horrible, yes) BUT there is such a huge gulf between “a human being could and probably has done or experienced this” and “a human being who experienced this decided to write a Reddit post about it” and I think far fewer people understand this. I had a very strange experience that I briefly considered putting on Reddit because I kind of wanted to hear what other people thought of it but in the end I didn’t because a) it sounds extremely fake and b) if it blew up there was no way the other person involved wouldn’t recognize that I was talking about us. So I just, you know, didn’t make a Reddit post and instead there is exactly one friend in my life who knows about it and I’ll probably never tell the story again. This is, I think, the waaay more natural response to having a complicated interpersonal interaction. At least the not putting it on Reddit part. However we’ve all had experience with something that resembles an AITA post so they often feel very real. Really I think the value or point of these posts is mostly roll play. Here’s a situation what do you think is the correct response? Look at what other people consider the correct response. Like the questions at the back of a story in an English text book.

the biggest one of me has always been hatred of mothers. in a significant amount of posts of this kind, the villain is a mother that is deemed unreasonable, regardless of the intentions of the autor. mother is a teen? sl*t, irresponsible mother needs a favor due to an emergency? entitled, no one owes you anything just because you got cr**mpied (this is a common phrase/sentiment too, very gross) mother needs a long term support arrangement due to circumstances totally out of her control? should've though about that possibility before you opened your legs and so on a lot of these "villain tropes" easily conflate in the mother archetype: someone that often needs extra help (entitled), that can be mentally unstable due to stress, hormones or disorders like ppd (unreasonable), that is a woman that Has Had Sex (!!!) (sl*t). it's a very easy target, and you'll find that regardless of the author's intentions, mothers are deemed the villain very often. especially if they're single

My favorite AITA posts are within fandom subreddits where fans will make up AITA stories from the POV of characters. Just as fictional as any other AITA post but way more fun for me 😅

I am always impressed at the amount of research Li does and how articulate she is. I've seen other video essays where a lot of people try to be pseudo intellectual but can't form a full sentence and get their point across. It's inspiring

This counts as “unreasonable trans person,” but I’ve noticed a weird subcategory of “you can’t have my deadname,” where a trans person gets mad at a cis person for having the same name as the trans person’s deadname. It sure is a weird category, considering I’ve never seen this happen. Edit: It's worth noting I've seen this story a couple of times now, but I don't know exactly how prevalent it is, considering I don't browse these subreddits.

i legit screamed HALLELUJAH WE ARE SO BACKKKK !!!

1:34 the name for that one is just “prodigal son”, you could say that story has been around for a few thousand years

im loving the blatant misuse of a tie

I am 37 mins in and the fact I’ve read a post that fits every category thus far has totally convinced me 99% of the posts I read are probably fake AND that I spend too much time on Reddit

this video has *everything*. a parody of yakko's world, CBAT as a bleep censor, a throwaway stefon reference, carrie underwood, beanie babies, sims, and a BDG-style spiral into madness. You know, the usage of rigorous methodology to aid in the creation of an intense genre typology for popular media as the presenter undergoes a gradual but increasing dishevelment that reflects their deteriorating mental state. brilliant!

An almost 2 hours video essay from a youtuber I just discovered? This must be my lucky day

Omg the huge age gaps with the op not wanting the discuss it are soooo frequent in my experience, i operate on the basis that all stories are fake/ragebait but there are so many posts like "my (18F) boyfriend (48M) ....." and then alll the comments being about the obvious age gap with the op reacting to everything like "i didn't ask for advice about the ages" i just like browsing the subreddits when i'm bored sometimes but the posts have become so extremely repetitive it's just not fun anymore

I'd argue that the Unreasonable Allergy and Unreasonable Vegan could both be lumped into the same category, call it "Unreasonable Dietary Restrictions". I've seen both kinds of posts and they tend to overlap in conflict but just have different reasons as to why they person can't eat that specific item. This new broader category would also be able to include religious dietary restrictions (see the post about a roommate not allowing OP to cook pork in the communal oven/microwave because of religious reasons).

Hey, thank you for pointing out the pop culture perspective of NPD is completely inaccurate. Pretty much everywhere is pretty bad, but Reddit is definitely the worst when it comes to ableism against people with NPD specifically

I am simply way too impressed with the Yakko's world content warnings to not say anything. I am not really a reddit person but you've got me hooked

Unreasonable expert - I think you included teacher, but while this could be associated with any expert who mansplains or is incorrect about something, what pops into my mind is a dismissive doctor who writes a patient's serious illness off as just needing to lose weight (or sleep more, etc) until they get a second opinion.

Excellent video in so many ways, but hold up, did she leave "False Abuse Allegations" off the list, or did I just miss it? I swear I see a post like that every time I go on reddit, and it's bad enough when the "Villain" is an adult woman but sometimes there's "false CSA allegations" too.

the cbat censoring made me spit my iced coffee at my screen-

I saw one of those youtubers who talks about "disturbing reddit posts" do a video on a blatant fetish story

I love the middle aged, kinda dead inside teacher poses in this video

Honestly i would love to see so much deep dive content on reddit. Another thing ive noticed on reddit is that a lot of the posting base (users who post) are very ... mean and narrow minded. Like especially for stupid things like your favorite ways of dressing or what you did today, if you go against the hive mind (which is never clearly defined) people get downright nasty. People can also be very toxically negative to the point where if you havent felt the same then you must be lying. Idk. I used to be close in a few communities of which i identify with the traits, but ive slowly stopped using reddit recently because it felt like i was being debated on for not having a wholly negative view on my life. I dont know how to say more without doxxing myself or revealing things on this account that i dont want to. Anyways, it seems to me that these experiences for me are unique to reddit. I've not experienced things like this anywhere else, especially not in real life.

This is literally what I need! Literally no one on Reddit can tell if a story is clearly not real Also I was wondering if you played tux paint when you were little? And also a video on style savvy would be so wonderful!!

Where do we think Oppa Homeless Style falls taxonomically? Would it be Unreasonable Majorities - Unreasonable Rich - Ladder Puller - Type 2BS?

we need a trilogy of this, a video about fake tumblr stories, and one about 4chan greentexts

This is so well made, thank you.. Aita is a guilty pleasure of mine, but I get kind of tired seeing the same tropes word for word repeated. Anytime I see "now everyone is blowing up my phone calling me an a-hole" or "my partner wont talk to me for no reason! Update: okay yes I told them to die in a fire, i dont see how its relevant??" I just roll my eyes... I dont mind the fake nature of aita, its the uncreativity that gets me down. That, and people being absolutely unhinged in the comments on obviously fake posts.

I am loving the gradual progression of your disheveled state, and the final reveal of the "wanna cyber" top. Incredible work as always.

Maybe things have changed since I used to peruse AITA but I found reddit to be harsher on parents than the childfree folks most of the time. A lot of "How dare those damn entitled parents ask you to accommodate them somewhat when THEY are the ones that chose to have a stupid baby" type energy

I like how the censor sounds are the notes to CBAT nice touch haha

THE CARRIE UNDERWOOD KARAOKE... you slayed that Liiiiii 😂❤

The subtle eyeliner getting progressively more tired... I love this channel sm. Your mind

In college, I used to read AITA when I was unwinding at night like it was the evening news. I got a job and became to busy and tired to keep up with tons of stories each day. The yearly awards were the best, it's the greatest hits album for the subreddit.

you ate with the song ngl

I sincerely doubt anyone actually believes these stories are real. They believe the stereotype and just want a "source" to point to whenever they're called out for their raicsm/transphobia/homophobia/misogyny/etc. "But there was this trans-woman that cheated on her husband and then killed three chickens therefore my transphobia and misogyny are justified!!"

I burst out laughing when bad apple suddenly played, Li your humor is perfect

42:39 the impulse buy category is my absolute fav bc it reminds me of the time when my aunt said that she wanted a nice roomy family car to take their two kids to afl practice and my uncle interpreted that as buy a hummer.

WE ARE SO BACK BABY LETS GOOOOO THANK YOU LI!!!!!!

I end up finding the comments on these kinds of reddit posts way more fascinating because people have less incentive to make up responses, and nothing makes my autistic ass feel more socially inept than occasionally reading a post thinking “that sounds reasonable/unreasonable” and then finding a polar opposite consensus in the replies lmao (eg. it is rude to bring your own meal with you to parties apparently or wear too much white to a wedding)

I was not expecting this channel to ever cover... Reddit anything, had me do a double take. Loving this fun deviation, though!

The amount of times I said "Hey, that happened to me!" or "Hey, that happened to my friend!" 😂😂

I just recently watched Sarah Zs video about fake tumblr stories and reddits role. And now Li drops probably the best follow up??? Cant be a coincidence 😂

BAD APPLE MENTION

cannot stress how in my decade of watching youtube that was the most powerful patreon pitch ive seen.