Which Reddit Post Will Become the Next Movie?

I might be biased, but I think it should be "all of mine."

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

The new A24 movie, Backrooms, was inspired by a viral 4chan post. And apparently, Hollywood is now interested in scouring Reddit for the next big poaster-originated movie.

Hollywood, look no further.

One thing some of you know about me very well but others are only just not about to find out: I used to troll Reddit a lot with fake stories, and ultimately all my devices were banned due to repeated ban evasion. I trolled a few subreddits, but the drama that caused my permaban came from r/AmITheAsshole, the subreddit where people submit “true” stories from their life and ask for a crowdsourced verdict of who was “the asshole.”

Am I proud of this old hobby? No, but given my untreated OCD at the time, this was a genuinely less damaging form of online behavior than Googling symptoms of Ebola or freaking out about my waist hip ratio while reading evolutionary psychology blogs, so it’s whatever. People still ask me if various troll accounts are me, but I can confidently assure you those days are behind me. But at one point, especially the lull of time when I had temporarily given up on writing but hadn’t yet discovered the wonders of sewing, “trolling Reddit” was my main hobby.

For years, I didn’t tell anyone I was doing this aside from family and friends. Even one of my best friends (a former friend, I should add) repeatedly asked me “what I got out of it.” (Joker voice: you wouldn’t get it.) But I have an answer for her: I did it almost entirely for my own amusement. One time, I spent an entire five-hour Greyhound bus ride trolling Reddit because I just had nothing else to do.

Around 2019, I began “taking credit” for troll posts after the fact, not unlike ISIS taking credit for terror attacks. While it was fun to get the attention at first, it basically ended my trolling career because then everyone assumed that every weird post was me. Some people even impersonated me—I can only assume they did, anyway, because a former mod from r/AmITheAsshole tweeted some damning story about me sending obnoxious DMs saying they were “lucky to have,” my troll posts, which I’m only assuming was the work of an imposter because I would never break the fourth wall like that.

But anyway, this short-lived hobby left me with some interesting learnings, and some foolproof ways to make a troll post go viral. I’m not sure these tips and tricks would work today, given that everyone is just way less credulous, and understandably so. So this is not really a how-to, or advice, or anything like that, but a retrospective on my best work.

You Have to Have a Good Asshole

The best AITA posts are the ones where the villain is really fun to loathe. This can be the OP or the OP’s adversary, but the asshole is the main character of the story. Personally, I prefer stories where OP is the asshole, especially if OP seems blissfully unaware of it—a smug, oblivious kind of asshole who genuinely believes they are the protagonist and supreme victim of the story, who you can tell is framing the story hoping to get a bunch of sycophants on their side.

You can also achieve great results when the adversary is the asshole, as long as the asshole is doing something really funny. I am not a fan of the stories that mostly surround the amazing revenge or call-out delivered by the angel OP. I’m just like a guy requesting commissioned pics on OnlyFans—I want the asshole to be front and center!

One of my viral posts, which I created when working at a tech company with an expectations grid to which people constantly referred (especially my manager who was trying to fire me) was about a man who used the same technique to hold his girlfriend to his standards:

I’m in my 30s, divorced and now dating someone in her late 20s. I have told her several times that we aren’t an official couple- I’m free to see other people and so is she until we become exclusive. She asked what would it take to be exclusive and why aren’t we exclusive now?

I didn’t want to be unclear so I did what I do at work. I work at a tech company and I manage a team of product managers. They all know exactly what needs to be done to excel to the next “level.” So I did that with this girl. The girlfriend level requires some expectations be met, mostly around trust, sex frequency and body maintenance. In order to move in, the expectations increase and to get married the expectations are very high. She is NOT required to do anything she doesn’t want to. I’ve just made it clear what my boundaries are.

She’s really mad at me because one of the expectations for the wife level is for her to agree to plastic surgery when she gets older. But again, nobody is forcing her to do that. I’d be happy just not marrying her and not being together forever, just enjoying each other until we aren’t attracted anymore. I told her that all of this was voluntary. She also takes issue with the monthly progress check-ins, but that’s strictly for communication- something my ex wife always told me to work on! What’s the point in expectations if you aren’t providing actionable feedback?

Well not only has she dumped me but now she’s calling me “abusive.” I would never harm her physically or force her to do anything she doesn’t want. Like I said, I’m perfectly happy being FWB if she doesn’t feel like meeting expectations. This isn’t “up or out.” And I’m not sexist. I even encouraged her to make an expectations grid for me, and I would happily comply with whatever level I wanted to reach.

TLDR: made an expectations grid for my gf. She dumped me.

This was a good one, and what made it believable (for many, anyway) was the fact that the asshole didn’t realize he was an asshole, and he had a somewhat legitimate defense of not coercing or forcing his girlfriend to adhere to the expectations grid, only setting it as a “boundary.” (In hindsight, I wish I had used more therapy speak for this one.)

I had actually attempted this one in more detail on another sub, which included the actual expectation grid. However, the expectation grid was likely too ridiculous to bypass people’s suspicion and the post was immediately removed. Perhaps it was a bad idea to make “will get labiaplasty at my request, she pays” and “will rim me regularly” requirements for the final tier.

Embarrassing Parent Stories

My favorite, absolute favorite genre of fake Reddit post was “Oblivious parent thinks they’re doing an amazing gesture for their child but has actually done something extremely embarrassing.” My most “famous” example of this style post was from a fictional man claiming to have gone as a clitoris for Halloween to “reduce the stigma” against female pleasure. Do your best to imagine this guy played by Tim Robinson:

45 year old male here. I am a sex educator with my Unitarian church and a proud feminist and father of two strong intelligent daughters (ages 13 and 16) and husband to a kick ass wife. So this is not your typical “hurrr durr sex is funny” post.

Every Halloween, we throw a family party that includes our friends, and our daughters are welcome to invite a few of theirs. I love costumes and often get really into it (last year I was a baby for Halloween and I stayed in character the whole night- it was so funny.) anyway, this year I wanted to go as something sex positive and related to my work so I decided to go as the clitoris.

Many of you might not know this but the clitoris has many nerve endings, and many males describe it as hard to find. So my idea this year is I dress all in pink, maybe sew some flaps to my back in case I just look like a giant eraser, and every time someone touches me, I’ll have a siren light that I press with a pre-recorded alert that says “caution: clitoris is very sensitive.” I also plan on hiding behind things at the party given the “hard to find” aspect. Trust me when I say our friends will love this costume.

My wife, who typically joins in, will be going as the female orgasm, which will be an Aphrodite type costume.

My daughters are mortified. I told them this is our grownup party and if they don’t want their friends to see, they can go trick or treating on their own. But I also pointed out that they need to be more comfortable with their bodies. The clitoris is a very beautiful thing and they should be happy they have a sex-positive father who doesn’t shame them for their natural bodies. They are slightly uncomfortable with my wife’s costume but less so.

My argument is: this is OUR party, if you don’t like it, go elsewhere. Their argument is: they’re too old to trick or treat and this has been their chosen method of celebrating Halloween for years so I should have asked them about the costume before making it.

The response to this one got really out of hand, with several people DMing me to accuse me of being a groomer and pedophile. When I wrote back to them that the entire post, and all the characters involved, were fictional, and that I was a woman who didn’t even have children yet, instead of saying “Oh well, ya got me” they pretended I was still the clit costume dad character and insisted I was still, somehow, a groomer.

Another favorite: the “drug chicken:”

I (mom) have a 14 year old son. I’m new to Reddit sorry if this isn’t the right format. Anyway...he’s been communicating less and less and I have no idea what he’s up to anymore. At the latest PTA meeting they mentioned wanting to start an anti-drug initiative where a volunteer in a chicken suit is the “Drug Chicken” and the catchphrase is “I’m too chicken to say no to drugs.”

None of the other parents wanted to do it and it’s for a great cause. Also I don’t want to “flex” but I went to Tisch, and used to be a very good actress so I thought why the hell not! I also could use some activities to do during the day honestly. But secretly, yes, I would really like to see what my son is up to during the day.

So I began my debut as the Drug Chicken and I focused a great deal of my time in places where my son was. At first it was just to keep an eye on him while spreading a wholesome anti-drug message but at one point I saw a bigger boy push him. Okay, mama bear kicked in! Lol. I don’t know what overcame me but I felt so protective of my son that I stepped up to the bully and said “there’s nothing more chicken than being a bully!” (Lame line, but the stuff I wanted to say would have got me banned from the high school.)

What I didn’t expect was that the bully would unmask me. Then everyone made fun of my son for having a “chicken mom.” My son is angry that I never told him I was the drug chicken. Should I quit as the drug chicken? How do I get his forgiveness?

Most people told OP she was the asshole, although a few people were sympathetic to her good intentions. One commenter had an especially interesting take, which is that the Drug Chicken must actually be on drugs because he’s “too chicken to say no to drugs” and criticized the school’s use of a stoned chicken as its mascot.

Don’t Skimp On World-Building and Supporting Characters

The best troll posts are ones that rely on a rich imaginary world and compelling supporting characters, which you have to describe all from the perspective of one unreliable narrator. My best example of this was when I posted as a fictional British teenage boy for three entire years. But I’ve successfully done it with other one-off posts, such as this one, about a dad who performed a rap at his daughter’s bat mitzvah (in keeping with the “embarrassing parent” genre.)

I’m a dad to a wonderful girl named Rachel (13.) Rachel recently had her bat mitzvah, obviously I paid and spared no expense. She’s the light of my life. However she’s very angry with me now, in fact she hasn’t talked to me since the party.

The reason is because during the reception I performed a rap song I worked very hard on. To be clear, I know I’m not Tupac. I know I’m not Lebron, I know I’m not Jay Z. I know I’m not a “good” rapper. But I AM funny...and I love my daughter. So I put together a rap song honoring her, making sure to add lots of teen phrases she’s familiar with. I’m not going to post the entire thing here but as an example, one line was “I’m MC Rapping Dad and I’m here to say, what a mitzvah to you Rachel on this day, my rhymes are thicc and I’m not playin’ so listen carefully to what I’m sayin’. [beat boxing] Rachel is kind, she doesn’t talk back, she doesn’t talk to boys cause boys are wack” anyway there’s more but you get the point. It was MEANT to be funny, I’m aware I’m just some dad and not a famous rapper.

Anyway Rachel ran out of the room during it. Later my wife says she found her crying. Her brothers, Ethan and Greg, were involved in the rap (breakdancing) and since they are also teens I thought they’d tell me if I was doing something “wack.” Now I’m wondering if A.) they’re not even cool or B.) they did this on purpose to upset her.

I apologized and she’s still mad. I have to admit at this point I’m getting mad because not only did I write a 5 minute rap song but I also paid upwards of 5k for the party and I’m not even getting a hug from my daughter.

There was a great opportunity for more character development in the comments section. Someone told me that if I were to do something like this, it would be better performed at home instead of in public. I responded something along the lines of “I actually paid for a professional crew to record a music video. I was planning to give it to her for a memento.” When I was told such a music video was a waste of money, I defended it, saying my son Ethan was planning on using it for his college applications since he was breakdancing in it. I maintain this post was especially well-done because of Ethan and Greg as supporting characters.

I had another post—which I can’t really find—which was intended to be more of a psychological thriller, where the OP was angry at her parents for refusing to believe her boyfriend was real. Her story involved a best friend—the only person who had seen the boyfriend—who mysteriously couldn’t meet her parents because she “worked for the CIA.” Eventually the comments figured out that the best friend was also not real and OP was hallucinating everything. It’s giving M. Night Shyamalan. Shockingly, nobody figured out the ultimate twist ending: the post wasn’t real either.

Unclear Asshole Verdict

Sometimes, I enjoyed doing posts with an unclear asshole verdict, where you could easily see the votes being split 50/50. This is exactly what happened when I once again leveraged the embarrassing parent genre to create this story of the dad who hosted a fake “shrooms party” for his son:

46M, son is 15M. I’ve always been a bit of a hippie and I guess that’s why my son thought it was appropriate to ask me to get him shrooms for a party he wants to throw. I had already given him permission to host a party (my wife and I would be home.) he said there would be no alcohol, only shrooms because they’re all natural so I shouldnt be worried.

I don’t really care if he smokes weed when he’s a bit older, but shrooms are no joke. Yes many people have good experiences but as a former hippie I’ve seen it go badly too and had a few bad experiences myself...no I’m not a pig/narc but at the same time I don’t think 15 is an appropriate age for experimenting with shrooms.

I said I would get him shrooms but I actually went to Whole Foods and bought dried porcini mushrooms. I showed them to him and he was very excited, we then cooked them into Reese’s brownies together. We actually had a lot of fun. Then he ate them with his friends. None of these kids were actually high, but the placebo effect must have worked because they kept claiming to be stuck to the floor and unable to get up, one kid kept licking the window, and a third kid claimed to think our umbrella holder was Michael Bloomberg. It was great. I filmed it and then when they had “sobered up” the next morning I showed them the video and the porcini mushroom bag and said, in true teen fashion, “you just got pwned!”

The goal here was first of all to prank them but also to show them they can have a great time without being high. Of course I deleted the video but my son is still angry and is accusing me of not actually giving them porcini mushrooms and claiming I only did that to save my own ass. It’s out of their systems now so I can’t even prove otherwise, but AITA?

Budgetary Drama

Another great subgenre of AITA troll post is “Person technically is within the guidelines of a financial agreement, but complies in the worst possible way.” Weddings are a great opportunity for this kind of drama. For example: the parents give the newlyweds a budget, they stick to it, and then waste the entire budget on ridiculous things (my brother reminded me I had a post about this where two Disney adults wasted their wedding budget on Disney character impersonators, but I can’t find it nor do I remember making it. It’s possible he imagined it, or it was an imposter.)

Perhaps the best iteration of this drama was when I posted as a father who was paying for his daughter’s wedding, which in theory should make him not the asshole (his nepo baby daughter isn’t entitled to his money!!!) BUT…he’s spending it on a Chuck-E-Cheese inspired token system:

My daughter is getting married in 11 months. Growing up, I always promised her I would pay for her wedding if she got married, and none of that has changed. However, she doesn’t want me to pay for the wedding in the way I’m doing it.

First of all, I told her she can get whatever wedding dress she wants as long as it’s under $1200. That doesn’t seem unreasonable IMO. I also put some cost limits on venue and photographers, and she and I are in agreement about all of that.

This is where the problem comes up. Because I am paying, I want my friends to come. My daughter doesn’t have a lot of friends and neither does her fiancé, so they’re worried that my friends (most of whom are either old band mates or fans of mine from when I was a jazz musician) will “overshadow” hers. In her words “I don’t want my wedding overrun by boomer jazz musicians scatting all over the place.”

Anyway, my thinking is, I’m paying so I get to choose if my friends come. In addition, my friends and I will be performing all the music for the wedding, negating the need for an overpriced DJ. She agreed to this and appreciates it, as well as the magic act that will happen during the hors d’oeurves hour courtesy of my friend Steve.

Where we REALLY disagree is the food. An open bar was important to her so I agreed to pay for an open bar. But we just don’t have enough to pay for both an open bar and unlimited food. So I suggested an “à la smarte” plan, in which guests are each given a $30 stipend for dinner using tokens, and they build their perfect dinner ahead of time using the tokens. The tokens also don’t come cheap, especially because I’m having them printed with my daughter and her fiancés name. Of course, once they exceed the $30 stipend they need to buy new tokens.

She is horrified by this, thinks it’s tacky, and “refuses.” Now she is telling me that we can’t do à la smarte and in order to pay for the open bar she wants me to disinvite at least half of the 25 friends I invited. She also changed her mind about the magic show and says she prefers an open buffet to a magic act, but Steve is going to be really upset about this.

I want to give my baby girl the wedding of her dreams, but also, if I’m spending $30k on a wedding, don’t I get to invite my friends?

TLDR: my daughter is unwilling to compromise on her wedding even though I’m the one paying.

OP’s username was “alasmarte.” Nobody was on his side, but a few people dabbed on the daughter for being “entitled.” Someone theorized that this entire scheme of OP’s was based entirely on the “a la smarte” pun, and someone else suggested this was promo material for a company called A La Smarte. In fact, the inspiration for the name came from the title of the Spirit Airlines snack menu.

I also did a post which basically flipped the budgetary drama script. In this one, the parents gave their adult child a no-strings-attached budget, but then take issue with how she uses the money:

AITA for wanting an anime-themed wedding?

So: my fiancé is really into anime. I’m not THAT into it- I guess I like it but I enjoy it on a more mainstream level. He is so into anime that he actually pretended to be an anime character for an entire year when he was 11 (obviously he’s 30 now so he’s not doing that lol.) But long story short, he got me into it and now it’s something we both enjoy.

We both want a themed wedding but we couldn’t decide on the theme (his idea, anime. My idea, Harry Potter.) We did a coin toss and anime won. Fair enough!

Now, as an aside, my parents are paying. But they always told me that their only concern was cost (had to be under $18K) but other than that, we can do whatever we want at the wedding.

They seemed to flinch on this when they discovered the anime theme. It’s not excessive (I don’t think.) My dress is anime cosplay but it’s going to be white. My fiancé wants to Naruto run down the aisle, and he’s encouraging the entire wedding party to do it. The groomsmen will be wearing custom-made suits with anime characters printed on them. The wedding ceremony will be in Japanese. There will also be an hour-long anime showing outside on a projector, which I think is kind of sweet. To be clear, NONE of this is hentai.

I don’t see anything wrong with it (yeah, it’s a bit weird if you don’t like anime, but plenty of weddings don’t cater to every single person.) But my parents are saying this is “too much” and they won’t pay for the wedding unless I tone down the anime stuff. They said they would have been fine with Harry Potter. One concern is that my fiancé is white (as am I) so they’re worried this could be crossing some cultural lines. They’ve also told me that I will look back and cringe at this and they mostly just want to protect me from the embarrassment. But I’m 31, I think I know at this point in my life what’s embarrassing.

We can’t afford to pay, so if we don’t do the anime wedding, we have two options: elope (hard to involve anime in any major way, and my fiancé hates the idea) or have a “Normal” harry potter wedding without any anime references. AITA for wanting my parents to uphold their side of the bargain?

The GOAT

I have one particular Reddit post that I am so proud of, but I can’t categorize it any which way other than “the best.” Presenting, Balaur and the pelotons—a story I crafted using knowledge from Russian folklore, the one course in college that earned me an A:

I think my [46M] wife [21F] scammed me into buying 5 Pelotons

Sadly the title is exactly what occurred (I think.) My wife is from Moldova. Up until now I thought she was the absolute perfect woman. She’s beautiful, makes me feel alive/excited, has a great sense of humor (she laughs even at jokes she doesn’t understand due to language barrier, which I find cute.) When I first went to Moldova 2 years ago to bring her to America for the K1 visa, her parents told me that it’s a tradition in their culture that if a groom comes from another country, they need to buy a luxury gift for the parents of their choosing. However the catch is the gift needs to be multiplied by the amount of decades that the marriage will last.

Realistically speaking I’m slightly older than my wife so I said let’s get them 4 gifts because I don’t see myself living for 50 more years but they told me even numbers are unlucky and displeases Balaur, a folklore creature in their tradition. Of course my wife backed them up on this and said it needs to be 5 gifts.

Now I’m not rich- I’ve been divorced twice already and I have some money but definitely not millions lying around. I hoped that a “luxury gift” in Moldova would be something like a goat. Turns out they requested a Peloton- well, five of them. I balked at this because it’s about $14K. They said it’s what they requested. I asked why they needed 5 and they cited folklore but didn’t explain why they actually needed 5 exercise bikes.

Well it became a hard “no” for them if I didn’t get them the stationary bikes so I did, even though I warned my wife this meant a much smaller wedding (she said we would elope and didn’t care.)

Well some time has gone by and by coincidence I happen to have made a friend from Moldova online since then. I told my friend about the Peloton gifts and she told me this is NOT a Moldovan tradition. She said my wife and her parents scammed me. I asked my wife what her parents did with the bikes and she said they sold them, because keeping luxury gifts in the house also torments the demon and brings misfortune.

I’ve completely lost my trust in her and am wondering how I can even move forward with this relationship. She still denies scamming me but apparently her parents are now living in a better house probably laughing at me. I feel so used and humiliated. Not sure what to do.

Bonus

After Reddit banned me, I had one post that I managed to publish through a proxy, a friend of mine with an active Reddit account. I never did this again, mostly because I just didn’t want to keep bothering my friend with more posts. It was fun for a final hurrah. Sure enough, this post went viral as soon as he posted it. My curtain call:

My boyfriend and I have been together for 3 years. Generally everything is great except for one issue which I suspect I'm not alone in...when it comes to sex, foreplay is definitely lacking. It's not nonexistent, but oral on me is generally not part of it. He doesn't demand oral in return or anything, so I've mostly let it go, but it does bother me a little. I figured nobody is perfect, it's not a dealbreaker for me, so like I said I didn't really bring it up as an area of concern.

Anyway lately that has changed...a lot. He's started going down on me not only every time we have sex (and for long periods of time- on a good day it's about 20 seconds) but randomly when I least expect it. The other day he did it when I came home from work and I was definitely not in the state I'd prefer to be in to receive oral (It had been a good 18 hours since my last shower.) I asked him what's going on and he said he just realized he likes doing it. Now obviously I was a bit suspicious because what are the odds that at 32 he suddenly starts liking something he's never liked with zero outside influence....honestly at this point I thought he might be cheating on me.

But then I made the mistake of using his computer to find this video I made of our recent vacation (I used his computer for it because he has video editing software that I don't have on mine.) And his iMessages are attached to his computer. I started seeing messages from his friends coming in about "How's the pussy eating resilience going?" and I'm like...what "resilience"? Anyway, curiosity got the better of me and I scrolled up on their conversation and apparently they are all devoted fans of the Huberman Lab podcast (Not sure if everyone here knows about it but I've known he was a fan for a while, I listen to it sometimes too) and there is an episode about "building resilience" and one of the main takeaways is that you need to do something you don't enjoy for increasingly long periods of time, like cold plunges or strenuous workouts etc in order to build resilience. So he's going down on me a lot specifically because he DOESN'T like it and he thinks it's enough of a hardship to "build resilience."

I'm really hurt and embarrassed, but at the same time, he didn't really do anything "wrong" like he didn't cheat on me and he hasn't told me any of this so I can't accuse him of making me feel bad. But it's really taken the pleasure out of it because now all I can think about is how much he hates doing this and how the entire time he's imagining Dr. Huberman and "hardship" or whatever. Anyway, I'm stuck on whether I should bring this up to him. It obviously looks bad that I "snooped" idk. I'm just extremely embarrassed and not sure what to do.

In Conclusion

What do I hope you all have gained from this? Truly, I don’t know. I’m not sure what I gained from any of this either, other than entertaining myself. But these are really just the tip of the iceberg. At some point I will write about how I masqueraded as a corporate sockpuppet account for the Frito Lay parent brand and tricked a bunch of horny men into filling out fake marketing surveys. Until next time.

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