To find out more about the Nothing Ever Happens subreddit, we got in touch with one of the group's moderators, who was kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda.
"The subreddit was created in direct response to r/thatHappened because of how often users would post stories there that were totally plausible or even verifiably true," the mod shared. "As for who created it, I’m not entirely sure. There was some confusing drama a while ago with the head mod."
"Other than that complicated week or so, it’s pretty quiet," they continued. "It’s been strange watching the sub blow up, as it was around 50k or so when I joined. Especially now, with few active mods, a bigger community means we deal with more spammers. The biggest problem we have is people spamming the 'nothing ever happens' chudjack memes, which have no relation to this sub and are connected to the /pol/ board on 4chan. Repost bots are the next biggest problem, but both have been manageable as of late."
"As for content moderation, I’m very hands off," the moderator told Bored Panda. "I think over moderation can quickly ruin a sub, plus this sub is very subjective in nature. People frequently post things I think are fake, but it’d really ruin the fun for everyone if I curated the sub to my own personal belief/disbelief."
"More importantly though, it’d just be way too much work. This is not a paid job, and I’m honestly confused how I ended up in charge of such a big sub," the user continued. "Removing a post or comment is effort that I just don’t care to make unless something is really bad. If someone’s just being a jerk, I usually give a 1-3 day ban. Once you start getting into straight up bigotry, it’s a permaban."
But the moderator added that they're only able to have such a hands-off approach because the users in this community are generally well behaved. "And engagement on posts is usually pretty low for a sub this large," they noted. "If even 5% of commenters are causing problems, which is a massive overestimate, that’s still only a handful of comments to deal with."
Finally, we asked the creator why they believe so many people are eager to call out "fake" stories online.
"I think part of the fun of this sub is trying to figure out which reason applies to a given post," they shared. "Some amount of the posts on r/thatHappened I think are just bots and karma farming, which of course, any sub will deal with. Others, I think, are people who just enjoy being contrarian, whether it’s a genuine belief or not."
"Sometimes it seems to be a lack of life experience, that one happens a lot with posts regarding children," the mod continued. "Some people can’t seem to believe that children are capable of anything. Lastly, I think there really is a ton of dishonest content out there. Between skits and ragebait content being framed as genuine, increasingly realistic AI content, misinformation, and propaganda, I don’t think it’s surprising people are so skeptical. Some people have certainly overcorrected, but I think their responses are understandable, even if flawed."
Now, you might consider yourself to be an honest boy scout who would never tell a fib. But the truth is that most people lie, at least some of the time. According to a study from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, three-quarters of people keep their lies to a minimum, between zero and two each day. But the top 1% of liars are dishonest about 17 times on any given day.
Of course, people often find ways to justify their lies too. The most common reasons cited for lying were to avoid others, as a joke or prank, to protect one’s self, to impress someone else, to protect another person, for personal gain, or to benefit someone else. And supposedly, 90% of lies told are little white lies.
Apparently, you can’t trust anyone nowadays. Because over half of the survey participants admitted that they lie to their friends, and over one-fifth say they lie to family members. 11% are guilty of lying to classmates or colleagues, and nearly 9% will lie to complete strangers. 8.5% also admit that they’ve lied to acquaintances. But we can’t really judge them. Hasn’t everyone claimed to be sick when they didn’t feel up to hanging out or needed a day off from work?
When it comes to lying on the internet specifically, research published in Computers in Human Behavior found that nearly a third of people are always honest on social media.
"It's a lot harder to lie about your gender or your age, for example, when you have pictures of yourself, pictures of your family, and most importantly, shared acquaintances,” one of the study’s authors, Michelle Drouin, explained. On the other hand, people were less likely to tell the full truth on dating apps and anonymous chat sites.
Apparently, our own behavior also impacts how we view other people’s behavior online. For example, if you always tell the truth on social media and dating apps, you’re more likely to assume that others will do the same. But if you tend to fabricate stories or stretch the truth, you’ll be skeptical of what others tell you. And the most common thing that people lie about is their appearance. But this isn’t surprising, as a whopping 90% of people surveyed said they expect others to lie about how they look.
The reasons that researchers found for lying weren’t exactly shocking either. “They wanted to be cooler. They wanted to be more beautiful. They wanted to be [hotter],” Drouin says, “They wanted to give an appearance of a life that was better than the life that they were leading.”
But some admitted that they simply assumed everyone lies online. “This is the place where lying is standard,” Drouin added.
