Am I The Asshole? How judging other people’s dirty laundry became the internet’s favourite pastime

You don’t have to be an avid Reddit user to know about r/AITA, or Am I the Asshole? This subreddit’s digital afterlife reaches endlessly across the vast plains of social media – particularly on Facebook, where spin-off pages abound. There are dedicated AITA podcasts, X accounts and copycat columns – even a YouTube series.

The original forum serves up neatly packaged snippets of other people’s personal dramas. Narcissistic exploits and gobsmacking tales of entitlement dominate the space, alongside run-of-the-mill social quandaries.

While other subreddits have accumulated larger followings than AITA’s 20 million or so members, it remains one of the most popular and prolific. What makes it such a fertile content mine?

From social gaffes to workplace spats

The subreddit has become a place where thousands of users crowd-source “moral clarity” on all manner of grievances.

It describes itself as “a catharsis for the frustrated moral philosopher in all of us” and “a place to finally find out if you were wrong in an argument that’s been bothering you”.

The instructions encourage contributors to post about “any non-violent conflict” they’ve experienced. “Give us both sides of the story”, the blurb continues, “to find out if you’re right, or you’re the asshole”.

Readers vote with the acronyms NTA/NAH (not the asshole/not an asshole), YTA (you’re the asshole) or ESH (everyone sucks here) and explain how they came to their decision.

Why do we love the drama?

When VICE’s Amelia Tate surveyed AITA readers in 2019, they reported a range of motivations for engaging with the content:

Some readers turn to the sub to genuinely ask for advice, others prefer to offer their opinions, while still more tend to lurk silently, judging posts from afar.

One data-scraping exercise revealed most AITA scenarios centre on relational obligations and uncertainty about what we owe others.

In other words, the forum taps into our enduring concern with what it means to be “good” or “right”. For active participants, “being right on the internet” is an addictive pursuit indeed.

But even for the casual reader, AITA serves up boundless material to ponder during lunch breaks, or to litigate with friends and family.

One reader has described it as the “Jerry Springer for the digital age”. Another calls it a proxy to “eviscerate, trash, shame, and hate people”. Others again are drawn to the forum for a sense of connection.

Beyond these innately human foibles, though, one blogger has observed how “almost all of these posts are a short story in themselves.”

A winning storytelling formula

Most AITA posts follow a recognisable formula. This reliable recipe has served not just the forum, but the internet as a whole, by producing digestible dilemmas for the masses to adjudicate.

Each post must begin with the shortened form “AITA” or “WITBA” (would I be the asshole), followed by a question that encapsulates their situation. Savvy posters will pose their questions in a way that creates a hook for readers, much like the opening sentence of a gripping novel.

The parties involved are usually introduced by a relational title with age and gender in parentheses. (For example, “I (23F) have been married to my husband (24M) for three years”.)

The OPs (original posters) can respond to comments by offering clarification or more information. They may also post an update on their dilemma, subject to moderator approval, to satisfy curious readers keen to know the outcome.

Shaped through these formal rules and informal conventions, AITA has evolved into a collaborative form of first-person storytelling uniquely suited to online consumption.

The content’s structure delivers drama in a familiar format that’s simple to repackage via social media, where clicks are currency and attention is fleeting. It also invites the reader, via its offer of moral arbitration, to play a central role in how the “narrative” develops and resolves.

Cogs in the content-churning machine

The AITA phenomenon speaks to a broader trend in digital media where user-generated content becomes the raw material for a vast ecosystem of derivative works and discussion.

As a content mill that churns out close to a thousand posts a day, the subreddit ensures a steady stream of fresh material for other sites to trawl. And the more that other platforms repurpose this content, the more exposure the subreddit gets.

Political theorist Jodi Dean has described ecosystems like AITA as examples of “communicative capitalism”, where communication itself becomes a commodity or source of profit. Within this system, user-generated content – such as AITA posts and replies – dissolves the line between producers and consumers.

As a rich and vast source of capital, AITA begs closer inspection. If the value of a story is measured largely in quantitative terms (such as the number of upvotes, comments or shares it generates), does this flatten complex ideas and encourage users to chase engagement, rather than meaningful exchange?

As we remain attuned to the self-perpetuating nature of digital storytelling, we’re sure to find fascinating – but perhaps uncomfortable – truths about the way human concerns are now reconfigured as cogs in the insatiable digital content machine.