Reddit is like smoking. At some point a friend told you about it or you saw someone on it and you’re like “hmm, I wonder what that’s like.”

Then you go on it for the first time and you’re like “wtf this is terrible everything is ugly.” kind of like how people hate their first cigarette. But you stick around because there’s a few cool links and you want to be cool.

Then you start going on it socially. You know, just to check the occasional front page link. You send a few links to your facebook friends and a couple to your coworkers. You get a few likes. This place is pretty good. It’s better than Buzzfeed or Facebook or whatever you used to visit.

All of a sudden, you find yourself on it every day. It starts off as 1-2 times a day, then 5-6, then suddenly you’re at 20 times a day and you don’t even notice. You’re dialled into all the memes and you start looking at those old facebook posts of rehashed content and you smirk because you saw /u/Gallowboob post it two days ago. You learn the jokes, and people upvote your comments.

Before you know it, you’re starting your day with it. You’re on the toilet with it. You can’t shake the feeling that something’s off when you don’t look at it. You get the itch. The shallow but persistent anxiety. Like something’s off. You check in the middle of a meeting or class just in case you got an orangered envelope. On occasion, you click on your username to see how many people upvoted your comments. You get giddy when it’s high and irrationally irritated when it’s in the negatives.

At this point, you’re full on addicted. You close the tab to get productive only to start a new tab and you don’t even notice you’ve typed in the url. You sometimes find several browser windows or tabs open to reddit at the same time. It’s on your phone, tablet, work computer, home computer. You have your routines and lunch break seems to go by faster. You get anxious in the elevators because you opened up the app but nothing’s loading.

You don’t even visit the defaults anymore but have your own rounds of the smaller subs that no one you know knows about. You make meme jokes your non-redditor friends and feel annoyed when they don’t get it, or you sheepily share knowing glances with redditor friends when you tell a joke you saw someone made in a comment once.

But it’s ok. You’re home. You’re amongst friends. You. Are. Free.