As another year nears its end, we tend to become nostalgic and reflect on the highs and lows. Reddit, one of the most popular online discussion forums, has released a video overview of the year 2021. It features a number of popular photographs from the site that are set to the song, “Is It Gonna Get Any Weirder?” In the clip, we see former US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders wearing his famous mittens at Joe Biden's inauguration in January this year, references to supply chain bottlenecks caused by the Suez Canal blockade, Bitcoin, and NFTs, and billionaires like Jeff Bezos visiting space.
There are, of course, plenty of strange as well as cute images that went viral on Reddit. These include a man melting into a playground slide, an opossum spinning on a bike wheel, and a baby hearing for the first time with an aid. References to the superhit Netflix series Squid Game also made it to the recap.
The caption of Reddit Recap 2021 read, “You started the year by making waves in the stock market, and throughout the rest of 2021, you continued to “go to the Moon” and make a real impact in each other's lives.” Reddit also added, “There was nothing dull about 2021.”
You can watch the Reddit Recap here.
It also shared the most upvoted post of the year: A billboard in Times Square promoting GameStop's stock, that got 431K upvotes.
The other most upvoted posts in the top five were:
A screenshot of a tweet alleging Robinhood hid a few meme stocks that got over 323K upvotes.
A GameStop YOLO update from January, that earned 286K upvotes.
A screenshot of a user telling their boss, “Quit my job last night, it was nice to be home to make the kids breakfast and take them to school today. Off to hunt for a new opportunity, wish me luck.” This got over 270K upvotes.
A video of a man “dodging a cash-in-transit robbery”, which earned 259K upvoes.
Several people commented on the Reddit Recap video.
“Yup I feel Reddit has nailed the recap head on. By simply including and capturing as much of their community as they could,” wrote one user.
A second user commented they have been using Reddit for 15 years yet the video made them realise “just how out of touch I am with the average Redditor these days”.
One other user wrote that the music was “pretty catchy”, and gave “it a solid 5/7”.
Another user thanked the “whole community for keeping me informed and entertained for another year”.
A fifth user made comparisons with YouTube and Reddit and wrote, “Yes YouTube, it was this simple and you failed. Miserably. This is fantastic!! Love it.”
Reddit also shared a 2 minute, 20 second video on its official YouTube channel and captioned it, “From the wonderful to the weird, there was no shortage of memorable moments on Reddit this year (ICYMI, a grandpa took his first selfie with a chipmunk, iconic).”
According to an official blogpost, where the company shared all details of the recap report, it stated that in 2021, “redditors created 366 million posts”, which was a 19 percent rise year-on-year. Posts apart, even the comments at 2.3 billion were up 12 percent year-on-year.
Reddit also said people felt empowered on the discussion forum this year and were inspired to share opinions and ideas to connect with each other.
