Disclaimer:  Today’s post is just for laughs.

My head is exploding! Don’t get me wrong – I wouldn’t want to go back to the life my fore-mothers lived.

They cooked over an open fire, and they had no matches. They beat their clothes clean on a rock in a creek after making their own soap. They got their news when it was weeks or months old — or not at all.

Most of them back through the centuries couldn’t read or write. They had almost none of the things I take for granted; however, they weren’t bothered with social media. For that, many days, I envy them.

I remember the days before social media. My great-nieces are in high school and college. They do not.

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Subreddits

I’ve whined about social media before, and I’ll probably whine about it again if I continue to write a blog. The latest thing that got my ire up about social media is something called Subreddits.

Actually, Subreddits themselves did not get my ire up, since I didn’t know what they were. What grabbed my attention and, for a while at least, served as the proverbial last straw for me, was they (i.e., Subreddits) were just one more thing about which I had been blissfully ignorant. One more word I didn’t know. One more thing that meant the world was whizzing past me.

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My #TBDWIROOSMTTL List

I’ve had a vague idea about Reddit for a year or so. It was something on my ever-growing to-be-done-when-I-run-out-of-social-media-things-to-learn list. That’s my “TBDWIROOSMTTL” List.

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Back to Reddits

I’m not picking on Reddit. I actually have no opinion about Reddit. I’ve never tried it. I have enough trouble keeping up with several social media outlets without adding one more to the mix. I just never gave much thought to Reddit.

Then, one day in October while I was on vacation, I explored some of the never-used features on my iPhone. I discovered that, if I had a clue how to work the thing, I could create a Subreddit. It was a new word for me. I didn’t have a clue what a Subreddit was or why or if I needed to create one.

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Janice Wald’s blog post about Subreddits

Lo and behold, just three days later, Janice Wald’s “Mostly Blogging” blog post (https://www.mostlyblogging.com/r-nsfw-gif-hot-subreddits/) was about Subreddits. There was that word again, and I still didn’t know what it was.

Curiosity got the best of me. With a blog post title like, “These 26 Subreddits will Make You Know More,” by Janice Wald, how could I resist? I had to find out how Subreddits could “make” me know more. I’m sort of from the camp of people who say, “You can’t make me!” so that alone in the title intrigued me.

Right off the bat, the blog post said that I needed to use Subreddits if I expected to have any success online, but I still didn’t know what a Subreddit was. I read on.

Soon, more new words were being thrown at me. “Redditors” (Reddit users) to name one. I learned that there are more than 138,000 Subreddits. Boy, did I feel stupid!

Ms. Wald’s blog post listed four reasons why I should use Reddit:

                1.  Reference information for blog posts.

                2.  Learn about your content area.

                3.  Network.

                4.  Blog promotion.

That list was very convincing. As a blogger and an aspiring novelist, I need all four of those things. I read on.

Ms. Wald went on to list the 26 favorite Subreddits of the 26 Redditors she surveyed. The list ran the gambit from r/houseplants to r/Howard Stern, but somewhere in the middle I found a possible home for myself.

In the coming days I might explore Reddit and check out Subreddits like r/askhistorians and r/blogging. When I read that the r/blogging Subreddit already had more than 40,000 members, though, it made me realize how I will forever play catch-up when it comes to social media.

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Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read. I’m reading ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates and The Family Upstairs, by Lisa Jewell.

If you’re a writer, I hope you have quality writing time.

Thank you for reading my blog. You could have spent the last few minutes doing something else, but you chose to read my blog.

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Let’s continue the conversation

Whining about social media doesn’t make it better. Whining about it doesn’t make it go away. Perhaps my whining about it today brought a smile to your face.

How do you cope with the ever-expanding world of social media? How do you keep up? How do you try to keep up? Do you try to keep up? Should I just stop while I’m behind? Do you have a “TBDWIROOSMTTL” list?

Janet