The best subreddits for killing time
To help fill you in if you’re yet to be initiated, reddit collects the most popular parts of the web specific to certain themes (organised into image boards called 'subreddits'), while also being a giant virtual chasm of bad memes, nerds and cat people. However, it can't be denied that reddit's time-killing potential is pretty great. So what are the best parts of reddit to check out? Be sure to witness…
/r/RedditBureauOfInvestigation
RBI is definitely one of the most interesting entries on this list, mostly because 80 per cent of the posts made to the board regard real-world mysteries and events with tangible outcomes and consequences. Reddit has made the news before for helping distant relatives find one another, assisting with solving crimes, and even cracking medical mysteries. But RBI is where you go for those more obscure narratives. From solving the true identity of a father who realised he was adopted late in life, to figuring out why electrical devices caught fire, to asking the public for help on cold murder cases, this one has it all. It's like the forum of Rome, except everyone has something they need solved.
/r/DeepIntoYoutube
YouTube is an amazing service. According to its statistics page, it would take you 600,000 years to watch every single thing on there, and there are well over a billion unique videos to watch. You've got all of humanity expressing itself on one website, and holy crap is some of the content downright weird. That's where Deep Into Youtube comes in. Obscure archive enthusiasts post their favourite weird finds, and in doing so create something of a collection. Be warned: only about half of the content is family-friendly, and you'll definitely come out the other side feeling less sure about the collective sanity of mankind.
/r/AskHistorians
This one is pretty self-explanatory and probably exclusive to nerds, but as already mentioned, you're probably in that category if you clicked this article. The best thing on the entire subreddit is most likely the mystery that is medieval paintings of giant snail combat. Seriously. Medieval people loved to paint scenes of battle with giant snails. The best thing? Not even the most learned scholars have any idea what's up with that particular remnant of the past. Possibly a job for RBI. Other discussions worth reading: the exact emergence dates of swearwords, the size and weight of ancient currency, and just who was first to ban pork out of Judaism and Islam.
/r/NoSleep
If you've been unfortunate enough to watch any modern horror movie on Netflix or read any horror book released in the last 20 years, you would probably have proclaimed to yourself that the horror genre is dead. But you would be wrong – horror is undergoing a resurgence in the minds of young web writers all across the world. No Sleep is a collection of horror stories – some fictional, some real, some totally indiscernible. I won't lie to you: there's a lot of bunk on there, but the top-rated stories are where the real chills are at. If you're prone to getting wrapped up in a tale, the name "No Sleep" is definitely an accurate one.
/r/ChemicalReactionGifs
What is so fascinating about watching two clear, colourless liquids interact and create magnificent swirls of colour, or strange alien solids, or violent explosions? I don't know, but I don't care if the answer is a bad one. The gifs are short and high quality, and most of the chemical interactions are between materials that your lab professor would get arrested for importing into Australia. If you're doing chemistry, this is probably a legit study resource, too. Give it a go.
Jonathon Davidson
Jonathon is studying journalism at Murdoch University in Perth.
Image: Blake Patterson, Flickr Creative Commons license