Here’s a simple question for you: who do you confide in when you’ve got problems at work? The most common answer is that you probably let off steam with other colleagues who intimately understand your workplace. They’ve got the shared history of rising tensions, and it’s natural to swap notes with familiar people.
There are also your close friends or family, who might get a running list of what irks you about your co-workers, and provide a sympathetic and objective ear in return. And if things get really problematic, you can always escalate it to senior management or HR.
Australia leads the world in Reddit usage.Credit: Bloomberg
However, there’s a new, and unexpected, place that’s increasingly gaining traction as the go-to where work frustrations are vented, and that’s the online forum Reddit.
The list of failed online meeting places is long. Myspace, Tumblr, Flickr, BeReal and Vine all come to mind, but Reddit has surprisingly transformed from a niche collection of small communities into a true powerhouse of the internet. In the past few years, its number of users has skyrocketed to more than 1 billion a month, an all-time high nearly two decades after it launched.
Australia leads the world in Reddit usage, with 33 per cent of all Australians over 16 visiting it at least once in the past month. Data from Meltwater’s Global Statshot Report found that Australians read it more than users from any other country, way above the global average of about 12 per cent.
And one of the most popular and growing topics that people are turning to Reddit to discuss is workplace problems, with users posting intimate details of toxic management and annoying issues with their bosses to a broad audience for comments and advice.
There are scores of better ways to complain about work.
Take the “antiwork” subreddit as an example. In 2013, it began as “a quiet corner of the internet to discuss radical leftist ideas about ending work”, complete with a tongue-in-cheek slogan: “Unemployment for all, not just the rich!”
By 2019, it had attracted about 13,000 members, a motley crew of contributors who mainly griped about their work and shared tips on how to avoid doing it.
