Dear Reddit, Am I the Asshole?

A lively and often hilarious exploration of Reddit—and how it is transforming the advice genre, usurping traditional columnists, and training our future AI advisors.

From the Athenian Mercury of 1691 to “Dear Beatrice Fairfax” in 1898 to present-day subreddits, the history of the advice genre is a vast and varied chronicle. The genre is a public spectacle of personal conundrums aired for entertainment and the practice of folk ethics. In Dear Reddit, Am I the Asshole?, Joseph Reagle offers a delightful and deeply researched exploration of Reddit’s advice subreddits within the long history of the advice genre.

Once constrained by the newspaper’s narrow, vertical column, the advice genre now sprawls across the internet, where no such boundaries exist. And while both print and online advice venues support disclosure, suggestion, judgment, and their continued discussion, only online forums can specialize in function and topic.

This book discusses Reddit’s unique aspects and contributions to the genre, including historical reversals, such as users hacking Reddit so they could ask questions of one another, as well as its novelty: whereas traditional advice columnists kept their lives private, anonymous commenters online will have faced the same issue as the querist, have professional expertise, or both. Finally, the author speculates about how AI will change the landscape of the advice to come, as Reddit’s user-generated content is being used to train the AI advisors of our future.