Reddit Awards | Know Your Meme

About

Reddit Awards are coins given by Redditors to other Redditors for their posts, comments and contributions on Reddit. When a comment or post receives an award, they are highlighted with a special emoticon to identify the award received, which also gives the original poster Reddit Premium (ad-free) or coins based on the different types of awards on the platform.

History

The first award, Reddit Gold, was introduced to the site around July 9th, 2010, as a subscription service. It allowed users to pay money to support Reddit and receive an icon on their profile. Later, Reddit Gold was made into a gift-based model, enabling users to react to posts and comments they think are high-quality. The recipient was granted a month of ad-free Reddit browsing among other features.

On August 9th, 2018, Reddit announced a rebranding of the Reddit Gold subscription and features to “Reddit Premium,” while Reddit Gold was made an award that grants a week of Premium. Also announced were Reddit Coins, a replacement to “Creddits” that can be purchased and used to give awards. In addition, two new awards were introduced: Reddit Silver and Reddit Platinum, the former of which recognizes content but does not give Premium, and the latter of which provides the recipient a month of Premium.

On July 14th, 2019, Reddit announced the addition of Community Awards, which are custom awards created by subreddit moderators for use in their own communities. On December 26th of the same year, Appreciation Awards were officially introduced as Reddit-themed awards meant to be more expressive than standard awards. Appreciation Awards and Community Awards often have a Coin price similar to Reddit Silver. Giving a user an award is referred to as “gilding” and posts that receive awards are called “gilded.”

Spread

On April 6th, 2015, the subreddit /r/AwardSpeechEdits was created for posting cringeworthy examples of Redditors editing their posts or comments after they became popular or gilded.

A convention of Reddit etiquette, or “Reddiquette,” is that when users edit their post or comment after submission, they state their reason for doing so in a format such as “Edit: [reason].” From this, the phrase “Thanks for the Gold, kind stranger!” became noteworthy sometime around or before 2017. Comments or posts with multiple edits styled like “Edit 1: … Edit 2: …” are commonly mocked on /r/AwardSpeechEdits. Reddit Awards have also become part of the Redditor stereotype and Reddit Moment.

On September 21st, 2019, Redditor Kevnojiang posted a fan art depiction of the three main Reddit Awards as waifus to the /r/Animemes subreddit, receiving more than 30,500 upvotes, 397 comments and several awards in over one year (seen below).

Wholesome Award

The Wholesome Award is an Award with the description, “When you come across a feel-good thing” (shown below). It is based on a photo of a Weddell seal that appears to be smiling, popularly known as Seal of Approval / Satisfied Seal meme. One of the original nine Appreciation Awards, the award was turquoise and white before a gray and white design was implemented. The Wholesome (Pro) Award retains the original color scheme.

The Wholesome Award has become notorious for being used to react inappropriately to serious events and tragedies among other situations. One such example was posted to /r/lossofalovedone by Redditor CaavGio on October 29th, 2020, showing a news article about a terrorist attack receiving 11 wholesome awards. The post received over 2,200 upvotes and 70 comments in 26 days (shown below, left). On November 11th, Redditor NthDigitofPi posted another example to the /r/okbuddyretard sub under the title “edit: thanks for the award mr spez,” receiving over 15,900 upvotes and 74 comments in 13 days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

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External References