Erin Taylor | The Verge

COVID-19 anxiety taking a toll? There’s a subreddit for that

2020-03-25T17:41:25-04:00

COVID-19 is all anyone can talk about in real life, which means it’s all anyone can talk about on the internet, which means it’s all anyone is discussing on Reddit. There’s r/Coronavirus (1.4 million members), r/Covid19 (101,000 members), and the racist-ly named r/China_flu (101,000 members, disappointingly). These subreddits have quickly been overflowed with people seeking news about how the pandemic has thrown world economies and health care systems into collapse. They exist to disseminate information — and of course, are victim to misinformation.

But there’s one much smaller, more intimate COVID-19 subreddit — Covid19_support, which boasts only 11,900 members — that is doing something different. The service it provides Reddit users is not one of news and information, but emotional support.

How about the self-quarantining people who are navigating symptoms but don’t need immediate care — who is speaking to them?

One post in the r/Covid19_support group asked if anyone else had trouble going grocery shopping for fear of being sick, with one user responding, “I’m not so worried I’ll get the virus, I think just seeing shelves empty or a ton of people buying it will stress me out.” Others replied with worries for workers who have been deemed “essential.” Many of the posts focus on a topic that concerns many people. What about our parents and grandparents? People are having to make the difficult decision to isolate from family during a period that you want to be with them more than ever. Luckily, on r/Covid19_support, members are not alone in this struggle.

Governments around the world have laid out varying instructions on how to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 which, for many people, has meant staying at home. But there’s been little direction on how to actually live through a pandemic. How does one reckon with quarantine life? What about those with mental health issues strained by isolation? How about the self-quarantining individuals who are navigating symptoms but are not in need of immediate hospitalization — who is speaking to them?

As people spend more time inside the house globally, those with the privilege of having access to a phone or a computer with a clear Wi-Fi signal can try to find support for the varied problems that inevitably come with staying put, avoiding illness, or simply attempting to navigate the financial hardship that has already hit many working class people. r/Covid19_support also offers a space for those who have been let down the most by our systems — those who may not be guaranteed sick leave and can’t work from home — to seek some sort of advice on how to handle the realities they face. One member with asthma (and elderly parents) posted about having to leave work early because co-workers were joking about “survival of the fittest” and they couldn’t take it anymore.

“I do think people need online forums more as the outbreak goes on, though,” moderator u/JenniferColeRhuk tells The Verge. “They want to ask questions that are very specific to them and to their situation, which aren’t going to be easily answered by FAQs or government advice. Or they see something they don’t quite understand and want someone to clarify it for them.”

People can get banned for telling someone to “get a grip”

Unlike most subreddits, which are a free-for-all, r/Covid19_support has strict rules about who can post. It’s not that they want to censor the way people cope with the crisis, but moderators are attempting to make the community “troll-proof.” u/JenniferColeRhuk considers this paramount when “you’ve got people who are looking for reassurance and support” in creating a space for people to feel their emotions freely about a grim reality.

The subreddit requires only a little moderation for misinformation, since most users are sharing their personal stories, not news. Naturally, the moderators come down the hardest on things that are emotional. u/JenniferColeRhuk explains there is zero tolerance for redditors who don’t show other users support, especially if they’re provoking others. People can get banned for telling someone to “get a grip.”

r/Covid19_support originated out of a post in r/Coronavirus by u/thatreddittherapist inquiring what everyone was doing for their mental health. That idea got picked up by u/JenniferColeRhuk, so the two of them created r/Covid19_support. “[The] main difference from the other COVID-19 subs is that it’s mainly self-posts from people who are struggling with various aspects of the outbreak — worried about their friends and family, or their own health, or what will happen to their jobs,” u/JenniferColeRhuk says.

Those realities are existential. Members of the subreddit, like the rest of the world, brace for the “new normal” as we look onward at a pandemic that has yet to be contained, an economy collapsing, and a global workforce no longer able to work. Internet access has become an indisputable necessity as many people socially distance in their homes or nervously await news of what is to come as they journey to their jobs, risking illness to be able to pay their rent. Subreddits such as r/Covid19_support will continue to be more important as this pandemic tolls on.

There is some solace to be found in anonymous strangers on the internet sharing that they too miss their parents

As the world awaits what is to come, there is some solace to be found in anonymous strangers on the internet sharing that they too miss their parents, that they also can’t handle the boredom with their ADHD, and that they as well have struggled with layoffs due to the virus. There is an understanding hand of humanity reaching out in a latex glove to give you a pat on the back.

Having been in my own house for eight days, I’ve often visited r/Covid19_support to find some sort of relief for the various stresses that this has brought on. I scroll the subreddit as I stress about whether there will actually be a rent freeze, as I wait for phone calls from home about my family members getting sick because they’re in jobs deemed “essential,” as the boredom only heightens all of my anxieties.

Until the pandemic is over, whenever that is, r/Covid19_support may be one of the many ways that people are trying to cope with the crisis, together and alone in our bedrooms.

Reddit’s Female Dating Strategy offers women advice — and a strict rulebook for how to act

2020-02-14T12:10:00-05:00

A woman recently went to Reddit for advice: her fiancé had financially ruined her due to a gambling addiction, and she wasn’t sure what to do. Members of Female Dating Strategy, a subreddit offering dating advice exclusively to women, spotted the thread and added their own assessment: her choice to stay with him was another example of “cockholm syndrome.”

On a website commonly known as the home of the manosphere, r/FemaleDatingStrategy is, in many ways, initially, refreshing. The “female-only” forum, founded in February 2019, prides itself on being the only space on Reddit for women who date men to safely vent concerns about their relationships with men who often devalue them, ignore them, or even abuse them. It’s filled with memes and advice, and a recent Wall Street Journal piece praised it for offering “honesty and tough love.” The subreddit has 54,000 subscribers and is growing rapidly.

The guidelines can be useful for setting boundaries, but they can become oppressive to women, too

But while FDS’s advice can seem appealing at first, underneath is a socially conservative approach that’s often deeply critical of women and their behaviors, placing limits on how they can act and what they ought to seek from a relationship.

On a base level, much of Female Dating Strategy’s advice makes sense. For women who have dealt with trauma at the hands of men in their relationships, FDS’s guidelines (“A Man MUST Treat You Like a Queen from the Start” and “Don’t Settle for Less”) can serve as a practice in boundary-setting, and the forum can offer a supportive community for those who may not otherwise have one. Many FDS members talk about how FDS changed their lives. One user said FDS helped them block a manipulative guy they’d been seeing for years; another said the community helped her leave an abusive relationship. Much of the basic advice in FDS can be helpful in learning one’s worth and relearning how to assert boundaries as an adult.

It’s clear that Female Dating Strategy can have an appeal to women trying to find answers to the struggles in their relationships. “The guidelines helped me realize (what in hindsight sounds obvious) that if the guys you are talking to aren’t choosing to reciprocate the same effort as you in the beginning… it’s not going to get better,” said a friend who introduced me to the group.

Dedicated members of Female Dating Strategy are supposed to read the subreddit’s six-point ideology around how to approach dating, follow its list of rules (they do not support consensual BDSM, viewing porn, or having sex before commitment has been established in a relationship), and use women-critical lingo such as “pickmeisha” (a woman who lowers standards to receive attention from men) and “cockholm syndrome” (when a woman keeps going back to “low-value” men). There are even approved podcasters and YouTubers for FDS members to listen to.

FDS members only support certain women

The sexual conservatism of their approach can become oppressive to women. Women are encouraged to not disclose their sexual history to partners or have sex too soon because they believe no man would ever love a woman who has sex quickly. Posts about sex workers can be incredibly whorephobic (a term used by sex workers to describe hatred toward sex workers that can be both relational, systemic, and societal), with comments on one post saying that abusive men should see sex workers instead of “normal women.” My friend who otherwise enjoys FDS says she doesn’t like “how they talk about sex workers or treat them as separate from the general population of women.” And just as the forum breaks men down into “low value” and “high value,” so too will it call women “low value” for behavior that doesn’t live up to their standards.

These strict rules mean that FDS members only support certain women. When one commenter wrote that they love FDS and are dating a High Value Male but they enjoy BDSM, some people responded that FDS may not be the space for them if they can’t follow the rules. Another post says that a woman who wants to ask men out (instead of waiting for him to initiate like a High Value Male would) makes them “a pick-me” automatically. Women who choose to propose to their boyfriends are similarly mocked on FDS. The subreddit also deletes posts that “don’t follow our principles.” So women who don’t follow FDS’s strict ideology are very quickly pushed out by moderators.

Similar conservative guidelines (“don’t rush into sex,” “let him take the lead”) were promoted as dating advice in books of the ’90s and 2000s such as The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right. Female Dating Strategy even has a page dedicated to FDS-approved dating books. These dating advice books and FDS mirror generally repressive norms about women’s sexuality, but they’re specifically about women policing other women’s behavior in the name of winning a man.

“I joined it recently because some friend told me I should, but I’m gonna leave it right away.”

The site also echoes a brand of anti-porn feminism that reaches back to the 1970s and 1980s’ Feminist Sex Wars. Sex-positive feminists argued for, as author Gayle Rubin put it, the “decriminalization of sexuality and for all consenting persons to do what they wished sexually.” Their opponents argued that porn, BDSM, and sex work were inherently oppressive and degrading to women. But by denying women autonomy over their bodies and sexual choices, they often ended up dehumanizing women who didn’t live up to their moral standards.

The Verge reached out to Female Dating Strategy’s moderation team for comment. The moderators said they would only speak to us if we provided “valid government issued ID” as proof of identity, which we declined to do, and they declined or did not respond to other offers for verification.

FDS’s approach to dating shares some behaviors with traditionally male and radical relationship subreddits. Like pickup artists, Female Dating Strategy often objectifies the opposite gender and turns dating into some sort of game to be won — just in their case, it isn’t having sex that’s the prize, but finding a High Value Male. Both communities often will blame women for the ways men treat them, and an FDS “strategy coach” even reworked the infamous Pickup Artist guide The Book of Pook for FDS’s audience by “converting the sexist stuff.” FDS also had to actively phase out femcel language (that’s a women’s “incel” community) because it was scaring people away from their new ideology.

In recent months, the community r/AgainstHateSubreddits has called out FDS on multiple occasions for banning trans women. When reading about FDS’s history of transphobic policies and behavior, they commented, “I joined it recently because some friend told me I should, but I’m gonna leave it right away.”

Day to day, the subreddit continues to fill with screenshots of funny tweets and inspirational quotes — images that are easy to get sucked in by and keep scrolling past. Those looking for true advice, though, will find something far more judgmental. When one woman recently asked another relationship subreddit how to help her boyfriend with erectile dysfunction, FDS spotted the thread and chimed in. With the tag “dump his ass,” an FDS poster assessed the situation: “Pickmeisha wasting her time with small dicked dude with ED.”