Until I got sucked into the Reddit vortex, I thought the site was hard to navigate and pick up on. I also thought it was only for people with specific interests, none of which I really cared for. Though, after registering and spending a bit of time learning the site’s layout, I discovered that it really isn’t that difficult to use at all, and it caters to an extremely large spectrum of interests.

For those who aren’t familiar with Reddit, “subreddits” are sections of the site that focus on one particular topic. To say the least, there’s a subreddit for everything.

“AskReddit” is one of my favorite subreddits, and it focuses around a question that a user (known as a redditor) comes up with. Other redditors answer the question and possibly discuss it. It can bring up some nostalgia and it can be exciting to see a question about something recognizable. For example, I noticed a question asking about favorite Saturday Night Live skits and I instantly remembered the famous skit featuring Chris Farley, “Down By the River.” It was great to see other people agree and reminisce about their favorite parts of the skit.

Other popular subreddits include Music, Sports, and more specific ones such as UpliftingNews and WritingPrompts. Whether you’re interested in finding out what’s going on in the world of space, or if you’d rather learn how to apply makeup, a new twist on a popular catchphrase, “there’s a subreddit for that” suits well.

Part of the appeal of Reddit stems from votes or points. If you create a post on a topic, your comment can be voted up by other users, which gives you points that are displayed on your very minimalistic user profile and the comment itself. Also, topics themselves can be voted up which determines their position on the subreddit’s popular page. A portion of the appeal seems to also come from the fact that the title submissions can be direct links, which makes it so that you don’t have to commit to a new webpage to determine if you’re interested in what’s being discussed or not.

Reddit was never something I thought I would ever have any sort of interest in, but after giving it a chance, there always seems to be a topic that interests me.