The source of the Reddit OP voice and the modern realities of "friendship"

Thursday 4/24/25

Go on Reddit and you will read posts by the person who then becomes referred to in the comments that follow as the OP--the original poster--and you are apt to be surprised that these posts are typically better written than what one sees elsewhere or can reasonably expect to see in our era of illiteracy and near-illiteracy.

These original posts often have some length to them. That is, the nature of what is being shared--a story from someone's life, for instance, a situation that is detailed from the arenas of romance, the workplace, and family--requires more words than a post on social media.

More words, too, than with how we now tend to talk aloud. We say very little. We have little to say, and we lack the tools to so much as say what we wish. And we don't think--or, rather, we think as little as is required, and that's next to nothing now.

Often, you'll see the OP responding to what others have said in the comments.

What do you notice? Keep an eye out for this next time. If you don't see it already, you'll see it now:

The OP doesn't sound like the same person who wrote that original post. They sound borderline illiterate. Like they just learned English yesterday, and not very well at that.

They're apt to be American, and yet one could very reasonably think that there's no way English is their first language, until that person catches themselves and remembers that so many people now border on being illiterate.

That's not just a writing and reading thing. It's a talking thing, and a thinking thing. We think in words. If you don't know any words, and you can't use words, you won't think well. You must reason. We reason through language. Hence, there is basically no reason in our world now, or anyone who can reason.

How would you account for the OP's transformation with how they wrote in the first place and then how we see them write throughout the comments?

You should note, too, that tonally and stylistically, many of these opening posts from people are executed in the same manner. There isn't much variation.

Here's the answer: People are using ChatGPT to write their opening post. They can't do it on their own. They've become too stupid and too lazy and are becoming stupider and lazier by the day.

That's why they sound smarter than they normally would and why the OPs sound the same (19F sounds exactly like 56M). Because it's not them. Then, in the comments--given that you'd have to handle the responses yourself--they sound illiterate.

Kind of a problem for a society when it gets to be like this, wouldn't you say?

Diagramming a truism: Take a person who is not a good person and a person who is. Have them be in some form of dynamic. Call it a friendship. The good person will hold themselves to standards of goodness that the person who is not a good person won't hold themselves to. The good person will think in terms of what is right and wrong--and the better a person is, they more attuned they are to this all-important, reoccurring question--and what they can do for others, including their friend.

The person who is not a good person won't think about right and wrong. It's not a big deal to them. They may pay it a certain amount of lip service, but it's just that. Nothing, probably, is a big deal to them. They lack for the requisite moral depth, do none of the work of introspection. Have found a way to mute their conscience, such that it has no real influence in their life.

We mute--and kill off--our consciences through all manner of means. The self-lobotomization of social media. Finding people who lie to and enable us. Always looking down and never up and out. Binge this, parrot that. Retreat from truth. Marry, have kids, and make one's life entirely about the family unit, but not in a healthy--or even loving--way; more like a, "I never need look up again and see anything for what it is, including myself, and I don't have to be there for anyone else, because I married this person and I sired these other people."

The friendship will be a kind of "whatever" proposition for the person who is not a good person, as is everything in their life, because they're barely alive. This same friendship, for the good person, will be torture. They'll be hurt constantly. Let down. Lied to. They'll do all of the giving. Or most of it, anyway.

They will care about this other person, so there's that. But there's also the truth that almost everyone is not the good person in this analogy. People don't have friends, for the most part. Not real friends. And they also cannot be a friend. They are either physically alone, or they pair up and create the aforementioned family unit, and they are very likely to be alone in other ways. But they won't have friends. Friendship is mostly dead. Which is a major problem, because friendship is the foundation of almost all that is good between people, regardless of the label affixed to the specific relationship.

Chances are infinitesimal that the person who is not a good person will change. Hardly anyone in the world ever grows. And by that I mean at all, internally, as a person. They can make change--not that that's common--and lose weight or stop drinking; that kind of thing.

But inner growth? It basically isn't something that happens anymore, and further, it's something that the world and how it works now--basically how it has come to be designed--mitigates against. You'd have to swim across so many currents, against the flow of so much of our society. What we reward, praise. How everyone is. How you fit in. Have "friends," date, marry. Who will do that? Who could?

I saw this post from someone and they were saying how it used to drive them crazy that no one could express anything and instead they'd just resort to saying the word "literally" repeatedly.

"Literally" is meant to be an intensifier. It's supposed to represent and convey--though of course it doesn't--all that that person is not smart enough to say because they are practically illiterate. Same with "full stop," "Facts!" Etc.

And this person went on to add that given how this is everyone now, they were becoming more and more alone. In terms of knowing anyone, having people to talk to. And much as it drove them crazy, they decided to get on board. To, in essence, become stupider themselves. They started saying it. Time went on, and they regressed. But they had more people to know. To date, talk to, fuck, hang out with. Instead of trying to go up the ladder, they elected to go down.

With this friendship of which I was speaking, one person will profit and the other will hurt. It's no different than a form of abuse. When we set up expectations, and someone else is told to trust or believe us in something, and then when we lie, as if we'd never said anything in the first place, we are abusing someone.

Here's what happens in time. The good person points this out. The person who is not a good person wants less to do with the good person, because this isn't music they wish to face. No music is music they wish to face. It'll be, for them, akin to getting scolded. They won't be able to argue, because it'll all be true and they'll know it. They'll withdraw, because they're not in essence supported in abusing without impunity or objection.

If they have something in place that the good person doesn't--which is likely, because it's that much harder in this world for the good person to have people because they require better people--there is less and less need to think about the good person, when they can just bury their heads in the sands of what surrounds them. Then it's like the good person has to decide if they're going to be abused for the rest of the time of the friendship, which could be decades.

People aren't good people. People don't have friends. They are empty and lonely. They are only technically alive. They drink and they drug and binge and seek the stuporous state, and there are all kinds of techniques for that. Running around, ultimately achieving nothing, is one such technique. Drive the kids here, here, here, here, here, but we'd be wise to ask ourselves who is that person really doing that for?

Often, the answer is themselves. Yes, they get the kids where the kids have to be, but that's not really what this does for them. They don't have to think, and they can call themselves what they wish to call themselves--the ever devoted parent--and they can also complain, which people love to do, and complain to be people just like them, who will seem sympathetic, but they're not actually. They're just waiting for their turn to talk and say their bit about the exact same bloody thing, as if they were special.

And that's what most "friendship" now is.