The "genre" of too-strange-to-be-true drama stories on Reddit
I've always wondered what people get out of writing obviously-fake drama sagas on Reddit.
If you've ever seen "am I the asshole" or "relationship advice" stories on Reddit, or reposted elsewhere - or read out loud on YouTube and TikTok, with details changed to avoid detection, sometimes - then you're probably familiar with the tendency of certain people to submit obviously-fake stories. They'll begin a tale which seems possible, if not likely, then submit updates which grow more and more preposterous, like a low-stakes, nasty soap opera, or a spec script for Riverdale. Cops are called; divorces ensue; people betray the protagonist, then come crawling back for forgiveness... there's a huge amount of this stuff, and a massive audience for it, on both Reddit and the sites where it's commonly reposted.
I don't want to dig up dozens of fake stories, so I'll post only a couple. The chance that any of these is real is very, very low. Certainly any of them with real inspirations have now become creative writing projects for their posters, much in the same way that Normal Gossip deliberately modifies stories to anonymize them. The, uh, "craft quality" of the stuff on reddit is pretty poor. They are preposterous, poorly written, and sometimes full of grotesque or upsetting or titillating details designed to shock the reader. I honestly do not find most of them particularly fun to read.
- A story of betrayal and infidelity where the protagonist or his family members punch, and knock out, his cousin in almost every single "episode"
- A revenge story which touches on multiple hot-button issues popular in these subreddits - pregnancy, allergies, danger to children, moms battling over the correct way to mother, and finally, a preposterous physical confrontation which absolutely didn't happen in real life
- And finally, a meta post so specifically tailored to the various confessional-subreddit-recap communities on reddit that I am certain it, too, is fiction.
Like the stories on Normal Gossip, the genre of (fake and real) confessional stories on Reddit inhabit a kind of morality-puzzle space. They contain an explicit invitation for the reader to judge the participants, and to create a sense of shared community values by interpreting the situation with others online.
They also present an inherent mystery - since they come from only one person's perspective, they often contain misrepresentations of the truth (or, in the case of the fake stories, the quality of an unreliable narrator). The audience clearly finds this rewarding. They want as many things to analyze, project on, and morally judge as possible, and the opportunity to speculate about things-unsaid is almost as appealing as speculation about the content of the story itself. (Some fake sagas include the author posting from several different accounts to present multiple unreliable-narrator perspectives at once.)
This is probably something that various social scientists and internet researchers are writing all sorts of papers about (I say, optimistically). From a fiction perspective, though, I've always been pretty fascinated with the professional and creative ambitions of the people who are writing the obviously fake stories. Why the hell aren't these people just writing fiction? Why don't they just say: I came up with this crazy story, and I'm proud of it? or even Pay me some dollars, please?
For a long time I wondered whether these people loved the first-person, confessional, online format of the storytelling so much, that they couldn't imagine writing these things up as actual novels. The author, perhaps, finds the verisimilitude thrilling, or considers it somehow part of the presentation of the piece - like the stuff on nosleep, which is often written by people who want to play with and react to the comment section. Sometimes, a forum full of people "staying in kayfabe" is valuable to the author, in the same way an audience can be valuable to any creator. It's a relationship they would probably actually lose if they admitted the story was fiction, because they'd lose the people who like pretending.
I'm also sure that "tricking" people is part of the charm for some... but I think the people writing these must be aware that they are not tricking as high a percentage of their audience as it seems. A lot of people post about how fake these sagas are, particularly on the best-of or commentary subreddits where they are often reposted.
But Bruno once suggested to me that perhaps the kayfabe is more valuable to the reader than the author, and I now tend to agree. The presence of ludicrous, self-important stories about improbable moral conundrums allows the audience to "debate" even more extreme and complex moral questions - including questions they know are fake or merely hypothetical. Reality is too limiting for the advanced gossip debater.
A lot of the fake stories are very popular, even though part of the audience is posting constantly about how fake they obviously are. I really have to assume that a lot of the people interacting with this stuff can tell how fake it is, even when they're pretending to engage sincerely with the poster. Fiction that's pretending to be real on Reddit fulfills the same interests that wrestling plotlines, highly-edited reality TV, dating shows, etc. do. Reddit further allows the audience to influence the story quite directly - many fake stories refer directly to commenters who gave advice on previous "episodes."
Fake stories often follow trends or patterns, or may include one of several obvious tells:
- People committing misdeeds right in the view of a surveillance camera, which records everything perfectly and allows the swift descent of Justice.
- "Minor characters" included in early updates for no reason, who then become major elements of later "chapters." Very common for a breakup story to involve a friend who later dates the protagonist and brings them true love and healing!
- The course of justice moving too quickly - people in fake stories get arrested and then end up in court almost immediately, and get divorced in a matter of weeks, or even days.
- Enemy characters who persecute the protagonist to an insane, preposterous degree, then apologize too completely and vulnerably, begging forgiveness from the proud, persecuted hero.
- Stories which follow topical ragebait plotlines - in particular, stories about about evil women or queer people, motherhood, brides and wedding parties, etc. and feature a character doing something that these groups have been demonized for recently in popular culture. Not all of them are fake, but many of them clearly are.
Anyway, that's all I have to say on the matter! I've been wanting to write about this for some time and have read a lot of these stories recently to prepare, and I am probably worse off for it. These are not quite modern dime novels... they're not quite modern morality plays... they're something else, because they're on a forum, and anonymous, and free. I can't say I'm glad that they exist, but I'm not mad they exist, either. They're like a very large and threatening beetle on the outside of my window - something I'm interested to see, but I'm keeping the window closed.