A Reddit Bot Drove Me Insane

Summary

A Reddit Bot Drove Me Insane 12 Apr, 2025 I'm doomscrolling Reddit. Every post is either political ragebait, recycled "funny" cat videos, "Am I the asshole for divorcing my husband after he killed our two children while drunk and high?"-type slop, or tired wojack memes. Then, finally: an authentic, human-sounding title. "Anyone else feel like the internet is just… broken now?" The post has nearly 6,000 upvotes, hundreds of comments, and an unsettling sense of genuine despair: "Everything online feels either like an ad, a hustle, or someone desperately trying to go viral. Nothing feels real anymore." It resonates deeply. But as I read further, something nags at the back of my mind. The wording, the rhythm is too perfectly calibrated, suspiciously optimized to trigger maximum relatability. I click on the poster's username. Their profile is a barren wasteland of karma-farming garbage: viral pet clips, recycled feel-good stories, endless reposted memes. They churn out multiple threads daily yet never engage in comments. Typical bot behavior. Returning to the original post, the last sentence catches my eye: "This was written in 1928—it’s incredible how it predicted the moment we’re living in today and where we're heading." The sentence is underlined, and colored blue: it's a hyperlink. Embedded neatly into the text, it uses a shortened domain "rddit.org". At first it seems legit. Platforms do shorten links for tracking and branding, after all. Twitter has t.co, Facebook uses fb.me. Makes sense Reddit might have something similar. Yet I've never noticed Reddit using "rddit.org" before. Curiosity, perhaps paranoia, drives me to a quick WHOIS lookup. Turns out "rddit.org" isn't owned by Reddit. It’s registered anonymously via a cheap freemium link shortener. It could redirect anywhere. I know better than to click shady links on Reddit... I click it. I'm swiftly redirected to Amazon, landing on a listing for a modern, illustrated edition of Edward L. Bernays' classic: "Propa...