Virality isn’t something that you can predict with ease, even if you can control some aspects of it. There’s a humbling element of luck at play. You can never quite know what’s going to go viral. However, if you’re consistently posting quality, relatable, engaging, punchy, and innovative memes, sooner or later, you should be able to grow your online following.
Forbes notes that virality is linked to content that encourages engagement, which then triggers network effects, where one person’s involvement pulls in others, too. “Viral memes don’t just ask for your attention, they compel you to react—through a comment, a share, a remix. They tap into a human need to belong, to connect, and to feel part of something bigger.”
The r/What subreddit has been around for ages. First created in November 2008, it currently boasts 251k members and ranks among the top 1% of all online groups on the site by size.
Meanwhile, r/strange is also a very old community on Reddit, with its roots stretching all the way back to February 2009. This group has 132k members and is active to this very day, just like r/What.
According to the friendly group of moderators running r/What, their community is meant to be a place for all things that are confusing, often “in a humorous manner.” To keep the quality of the content as high as possible, the mods ask all the members to post just photos and videos, avoiding text. However, if you’d like to provide a bit more context, you can post any relevant links in the comments.
Meanwhile, the r/strange subreddit is a digital space for things that cannot be explained. It is a “community to share strange things that you encounter in your daily life,” whether in photo, video, or text form. Members of this group are encouraged to share a detailed description of what they found to be strange in their posts, especially if it’s not obvious.
However, you shouldn’t go about sharing false information on r/strange, only things that are authentic. If you don’t abide by this rule, you might get banned. Something else to keep in mind is that there’s no place for alien or UFO pictures or videos on the sub. Unless, that is, “it was encountered by you and you have sufficient evidence to share about the incident.”
During a previous in-depth interview, Bored Panda reached out to u/CatRosalina, who is one of the moderators running the sprawling r/What online group.
According to her, she had taken over moderating the community soon after it was created, to save it from fading away, after the original creator had abandoned it. This is actually not the only sub she’d saved, as she’d done something similar with r/fourthworldproblems, which is “about people pretending to be cavemen.”
“I had previously been just a standard member of the sub, when I noticed there was a ton of spam. The sub owner was active on Reddit, but wasn't moderating the sub. I reached out to them in hopes of becoming a mod to help out, and they offered to just give the sub to me. I happily accepted, and immediately went on a cleaning spree,” u/CatRosalina said, opening up to us about the origins of r/What.
