#this is one of the dumbest things ive ever written but after doomscrolling on reddit and tiktok it wouldn't leave my head so. here u go

[cassynite]

Genres of reddit drama posts (stuff posted on r/relationships, r/maliciouscompliance, AITA, etc.) ranked by believability

This absolutely happened: Without a doubt this is a real thing that happened to a real person. The issue discussed in the post is detailed, unique but familiar, and grounded in reality; the "villain" of the post exhibits behaviors you'd actually see a real person do, and oftentimes there can be a question of who is actually in the right (especially with AITA posts). The issues discussed might not be all that entertaining at the end of the day, and/or the resolution ends up being unsatisfying. Entertainment value hovers at 5/10, give or take a point depending on what's going on.

This might have happened, and boy do I hope it did: The creme de la creme of reddit posts--bombastic, can't-turn-your-eyes-away drama, but with such a unique situation or such granular detail that it has to be based at least a little bit on a real thing, and if it's an exaggerated retelling of events you're willing to let it slide. Often told in a very distinct voice as well, with satisfying but realistic resolutions. Almost always has a well defined 'hero' of the narrative (not always the narrator; a lot of AITA posts where the poster is TA falls into this category in my experience). If it's not one of the top voted posts recently it should be.

The Soap Opera: There's a 90% chance this didn't happen at all, and if it did the version of events being told is so exaggerated it still might as well just be made up--but damn if it isn't entertaining anyway. Always has very clear heroes as well as villains, and those villains are mustache-twirling cackling caricatures with unhinged personalities and behaviors that you would never see in real life. A lot of Karen stories as well as mom-in-law stories fall under this umbrella. However, it's still unique enough and interesting enough that you want to know what's going to happen next in what is definitely going to be a multi-update saga. It's a soap opera--you know it's fake, but you're willing to suspend your disbelief.

The 2014 fake tumblr post: This tries to be a soap opera but overshoots by a lot; the name I give it should tell you the kind of "and then the whole bus clapped" energy these posts tend to give. The villains of the drama are even more villainous and more over-the-top with their behaviors, and their comeuppance is even more extreme. These Karens end up going to jail for berating services workers; these mom-in-laws get disowned by their families for the way they try to wear their wedding dresses to their sons' weddings to OP. Most likely you find these on those minimum effort garbage robo-voice tiktok accounts that plague my for you page.

The Trained Algorithm: This is a soap opera/tumblr post story that is a little too...similar to something you've already read. It could be the details given or even just the way it's written, that certain style or word choice that if you read/listen to hundreds in a row you can catch on to, a subtle but present sign that this wasn't even made by a person but by machine learning trained on these posts for the purpose of content farming. Tend to be mid to okay as entertainment but ultimately depressing because you can't even pretend it's a little bit true, and having to face the fact that people are so bent on Creating Content for Consumption that they'll resort to getting a bot to right a fucking AITA post of all things makes me have to face the existential horror of capitalism, which is something I read AITA posts to get away from.

The Trash: This is also a bot-churned post, but it's not even hiding it--words are used in teh wrong places, or completely mispelled, and it's obvious that after chatGPT spat this one out it wasn't even proofread before it was shat onto a message board or fed into a robo voice to be posted on tiktok. You can spot these from a mile away, and I imagine that there's a circle of hell that just has to read these as punishment.