Reddit Revue - r/Nihilism - AJnet Magazine

This month’s Reddit Revue: r/Nihilism!

Well that sounds like a good time.

I don’t know when it happens exactly, but at some point in your life you have that moment where everything just kind of zooms out. You’re going through your day, maybe you’re at work, maybe you’re stuck in traffic, maybe you’re laying in bed staring at the ceiling at 2:30 in the morning because you can’t sleep, and it just hits you:

None of this actually matters.

Not your job, not your bills, not your little routines, not even most of the people you deal with on a daily basis. You’re just another asshole on a rock floating through space, doing meaningless bullshit to survive until you eventually die and get forgotten about in a couple generations.

Every now and then, I feel it. Just the other week, I was sitting in traffic, trying to make my way home from work, spazzing out at people cutting me off. Then I just kind of stopped and thought, Why the fuck do I even care? I’m going to get where I’m going, or I’m not. Either way, the universe is not going to notice or give a single shit.

And for about five minutes, it was actually kind of peaceful.

Then the light turned green, and someone behind me laid on the horn. I went right back to being an angry jerk like nothing ever happened.

On paper, nihilism sounds bleak as hell. “Nothing matters, life has no meaning, we’re all going to die.” But in practice, it can go one of two ways. Either you spiral into a depressive hole where nothing is worth doing, or you realize that if nothing matters, then you’re free to do whatever the hell you want with the time you’ve got.

Of course, this is Reddit we’re talking about.

I’m fully expecting r/Nihilism to lean heavily toward the first option. A bunch of miserable doomers jerking each other off about how pointless everything is, mixed in with the occasional pseudo-intellectual essay that sounds deep until you realize it’s just someone rewording the same three thoughts over and over again.

r/Nihilism is, as you’d expect, a subreddit dedicated to discussing nihilism, the belief that life lacks inherent meaning, value, or purpose. In theory, that could lead to some interesting conversations about philosophy, existence, and how people choose to live in spite of all that.

In reality, it’s probably going to be a bunch of idiots who just discovered that nothing matters and decided that the best possible use of that revelation is to complain about it on the internet.

So what happens when a bunch of people who believe nothing matters gather together to talk about how nothing matters?

Let’s stare into the void that is r/Nihilism and see if it stares back.

Screenshot of Reddit post about nihilism.

I’m beginning to think that coming to r/Nihilism was a mistake.

Don’t let dreams be dreams. Become one of the stupid carefree apes that you want to see.

You’re already off to a great start.

This sounds like it was written by a serial killer.

I’m going to complain about it on Reddit and point the finger at everyone else. Kind of like what you’re doing.

What the actual fuck did I just read?

This isn’t a rant.

I don’t know what to actually call this insane rambling, but it’s definitely not a rant.

Nothing.

If this world is a school, then r/Nihilism is the special needs class.

It takes a special kind of talent to write this much and say absolutely nothing.

You can stay down there, idiot.

Finally, a sentiment I can get behi-

Woah hold on a minute. Legalize littering?

Go to hell, scumbag.

I know this story is bullshit because I looked it up, and there is no porno called “Weed Slutz”.

Liar.

I’m glad they included that warning about forcing others to read it. I was just about to tie my girlfriend up, hold her eyes open with an eye speculum, and make her read this post.

I’m still going to tie her up though.

AJnet Magazine’s own Chick Styles has the answer to this very question!

In fact, I think I’d rather go read the Xyzabcrst Files than read anymore of the trash on r/Nihilism.

Alright, that about wraps up r/Nihilism.

That “nothing matters” moment we talked about earlier can go two completely different ways. For a few minutes, sitting in traffic, it actually felt kind of peaceful. Like, who cares if some idiot cuts me off, who cares if I’m five minutes late to meet a client? The universe isn’t keeping score.

Then you look at that sub, and somehow they took that same idea and turned it into a full-time job being miserable.

If nothing matters, then why are you choosing to feel like shit about it? There’s no rulebook here, there’s no cosmic authority handing out grades. You can either take that realization and use it to loosen up a bit, or you can sit there doomscrolling Reddit all day crying about how pointless everything is.

And for a group of people who claim nothing has meaning, they sure seem pretty committed to that routine.

I don’t know. Maybe that’s just human nature. When you give people absolute freedom, half of them will use it to build something, and the other half will use it to complain that there’s nothing worth building.

Anyway, next month’s Reddit Revue will probably be something a little less existential. Maybe we’ll go laugh at something stupid for a change.

Or we won’t. Doesn’t really matter, right?

Alright, I’m done here.

Angry_Jerk

Adam “The Angry Jerk” Baker is the CEO of The AJnet Organization and Editor-in-Chief of AJnet Magazine. A grizzled internet veteran of over 20 years, he writes about politics, culture, and whatever else manages to annoy him that day.

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