It all started with the classic scuffle over the air conditioning in the office. Women tend to ask for a higher temperature, men for a lower one, and the battle over control of the thermostat ensues. In the spring of 2013, an American photographer named Marc Beauleac lived this shock in his office and saw the solution very clearly: since the girls could choose to put more clothes on top if they were cold, the logical thing is that they fold up at 17 degrees, or whatever it was that the men in the office requested.
Still, he suspected that not everyone would agree, and, fond of internet forums that he was, he decided to submit it to the verdict of Reddit, the news and discussion aggregation website that was founded in 2005 and is still the 20th most visited in the world (sixth in the United States). Since he couldn’t find any subreddit (subforum) that suited his needs, he founded a new one and called it AITA, which stands for Am I The Asshole, or Am I the Asshole?
In the ten years that have elapsed since that original post, the forum, which has its own language and codes, has served to settle hundreds of thousands of non-violent daily conflicts that range from the ridiculous to the tragic and draw a whole range of behaviors. strangely human. Am I an idiot for imposing a themed wedding in which all the guests must wear hand puppets? Am I an idiot for asking my boyfriend to call me “granny” during sex? Am I an idiot for forcing my wife to pay the bill for the epidural she requested during the delivery of our son? Am I an idiot for trying to charge my friend 400 euros for a hand-knitted cardigan for her baby? I’m an idiot for pretending that I didn’t know my girlfriend at all after she put on a number on a plane trip? Am I an idiot for not serving several alcoholic beverages to a pregnant client as a waiter? The possibilities are, and have been, endless. And they always get a clear answer, since users must vote if, indeed, that person is an idiot or not.
The evolution of the AITA photo, which now has some three million users, says a lot about the history and differences in etiquette in different corners of the internet, and about how the way of interacting online has evolved in these ten years. Before AITA, there were similar discussion forums like Juicy Campus or Yik Yak, and they all ended up closing and leaving behind a series of victims, people who had suffered cyberbullying after telling or someone telling something related to their private life. If this does not happen on Reddit, where the tone is usually calm and respectful, it is because 18 moderators (it is only known that their ages range from 18 to 50 and that they have various professions, from artists to computer programmers, passing through lawyers and doctors). ) who voluntarily dedicate themselves to reading the more than 850 stories that arrive on the forum every day, deciding which ones are posted and which ones are not, and eliminating comments they deem offensive.
The main moderator remains the creator of the forum, Marc Beauleac. In an interview he gave in 2021 to a Buzzfeed podcast, he explained that part of his role is also to verify that the story is true and ask the sender for some kind of proof if they believe it is a fabrication. Still, he admits that many of the stories published may be false, fabricated by people who may have an interest in demonizing a particular group.
Although he acknowledges that the main motivation many users have for entering is to judge the possibly despicable behavior of other people, Beauleac has a very optimistic vision of his community, which he believes has really helped many of those who post to change their vision. about a matter. In the podcast she cites the example of a story that went viral in which a remarried man asked his stepdaughter to hide her tampons and pads so as not to disturb her two children. So many people told that user that this was sexist and unreasonable that the guy ended up getting it and writing a post note admitting he was wrong.
Patrizia di Filippo, one of the authors participating in the group essay Memeceno (La Caja Books), considers herself a regular redditor, and has spent many hours diving into that forum. “What I like is that it’s not like Twitter. People don’t skin. There is a lot of support and a sense of community. It’s kind of purer and cleaner, also because being so divided into different threads, you can’t become famous by saying something scandalous, which is what happens on Twitter. There is no such dynamic of applause. I think that people who ask questions in AITA really want to know the answer. Like when you know you’ve done something wrong and you tell your friends about it, looking for them to agree with you”. From the narrative point of view, Di Filippo also points out, the stories that appear there are irresistible, because of what they tell and how they are told.
“I am very interested in seeing how we tell a story in which we know we have been wrong, how we hide information and how consciously or unconsciously you are trying to guide public opinion so that it gives you a positive verdict.” From all her years diving on the forum, she remembers being shocked by the story of Moira Rose, a former goth/emo from Portland, Oregon who raised a flock of crows that eventually turned violent and attacked her neighbors. “I also remember a lot of times where people have shared some very bad things and the community has helped that person out of an abusive relationship. AITA has given a lot, and also for good things”.
That difference in public that the author mentions is fundamental. It is not the same to go to a forum of dedicated redditors, whose use of the Internet is more similar to that of the original Internet, creating sub-communities of similar interests, than to that of the social networks born or grown in the last decade.
In May 2019, model Chrissy Teigen, who has a huge following across all platforms, tweeted that she had been reading the AITA forum for six hours. Almost immediately, the subreddit reached one million users, many of whom were unaware of the uses and customs of that corner. It was also around then that the juiciest stories began to go viral in other media. AITApod was born, a podcast dedicated to dissecting the most unlikely stories, several YouTube channels dedicated to AITA were generated – wedding stories, with their court of bridesmaids, bridezillas (Godzilla brides), groomzillas (the same but with grooms and its irresistible mix of money, stress and family always work especially well – and a Twitter account emerged, shutting down this January but amassing 622,000 followers with simple screenshots of the best/worst of the forum.There’s also an Instagram account, where fans are collectively outraged when there are stories like: am I a jerk for not wanting to pay my boyfriend Uber prices when he picks me up from work?
And on Tik Tok, users have adapted the AITA format to their own codes. For example, telling a story about your own mother-in-law while applying makeup or asking yourself “Am I a jerk for not inviting my daughter to my wedding?” (always weddings) about a manicure video, narrated in one of those neutral and unrecognizable voices that are used on that platform.
When these “foreign” users come to the main forum from other networks they often subvert “decency,” several of the moderators explained in an article in The Daily Dot. They call them “outsiders” and recognize them because they tend to insult and incite bullying. The regulars, said the same moderator, “are good people who understand the spirit of the forum.”
It can also be said that the initial essence of AITA has migrated to other phenomena born in recent years. The Normal Gossip podcast, hosted by journalist Kelsey McKinney and which exploded with success during the pandemic, is also based on explaining anonymous stories from random people and encouraging the guest of the week and the audience themselves to make moral decisions about what is explained , which is never overly dramatic (a knitting club lying about the origin of the organic wool it uses, a trip to Southeast Asia that ends fatally) but perfectly satisfies that need for gossip or storytelling.
Of course, judgments are not always fair or accurate. The original post that gave rise to AITA was settled with a negative. That is to say, the few users that were then in the subreddit exempted Beauleac from being an idiot for wanting to freeze his office mates. He himself has later recognized that he was wrong. And since then several articles have been published explaining that what is considered the ideal temperature for offices was calculated in the sixties based on the physique of a 40-year-old man weighing about 70 kilos. Today, many of the three million AITA users would have explained it to you.
