R/HAVEWEMET

R/HaveWeMet is a subreddit that acts as a small virtual town called Lower Duck Pond with 145,000 members. Communicating only through text forums, pictures stopped being used after a period of time on it, townspeople craft their own avatars and find community with others. Everyone on the subreddit has to act like they know each other and live within the same town. It is a space where newcomers are welcome to enter in immediately after reading the rules of the sub and start making connections, introductions are unnecessary because they have known you *forever*. Identity is pretty much anonymous unless the reddit account you are using is linked to your own personal reddit. The majority of users have a separate account, or multiple separate accounts, to engage on the page without giving away their own personal information. It is a subsection of reddit that has created a virtual world that is very fascinating to participate in and view.

FAQ and RULES

The subreddit has very few strict rules that govern it. Mostly what is important is staying in character and not breaking the illusion while on the page. It is encouraged to fully embody your character while participating and breaking of this persona can result in bans from the page. Making posts also that break the third wall and acknowledge the subreddit are also prohibited as it breaks the illusion that’s been built. Another rule is to acknowledge that this is supposed to be a “normal” town. Sci-fi and supernatural characters or actions are not allowed as it is not the point of the subreddit but paranormal posts are occasionally allowed as long as they are grounded in reality. This is an interesting facet of it as most virtual communities such as second life or VR chat allow the users to step into a fantasy world. Keeping this grounded in reality helps contribute to the text based facet of the world and keeps it organized and understandable to newcomers. Sexually explicit and extreme hate content is banned from being posted. Users are also flagged from mentioning other redditors who are not participating in threads as to not ruin someone else's character development. It is encouraged for new users coming on to also read the general rules of improv as an introduction to acting to help become someone else and inhabit this character in its virtual environment online.

History

This subreddit was started by U/Devulah who made a post on r/FindAReddit, a subreddit dedicated to finding specific subreddits, asking if there was a page where “where people act like they know everyone personally?”. They described it specifically as a place where you “make a post to discuss something, and everyone in the comments pretends like they know you, and respond referencing past events you experienced together that didn't actually happen”. Upon finding out that this didn’t exist yet and seeing positive reactions to their post U/Devulah decided to create the subreddit themselves around four years ago. Their initial post in r/FindAReddit received two hundred and ninety four upvotes along with thirty three comments. Initially the sub started out slow but grew steadily building a niche community in the process. Since the sub is so unique periodically it will get attention online and an influx of newcomers will join. Sometimes this is welcome when the subreddit stagnates, other times it can be very irritating for long term posters. This can be irritating because many join without reading the rules and history of the subreddit thus making mistakes like breaking the fourth wall, or introducing things not involved in our physical reality.

There have been many notable long term users who have contributed greatly to the community. Each year the subreddit elects a mayor, 2017 was Mayor Ulysses, 2018/2019 was Mayor Bruce, and 2021 is Mayor Krystal. All of the people chosen as mayors have been contributing routinely to the subreddit and creating community in their time as part of it.

Mostly this exists as a forum that people in a small town would use to post complaints, news, updates, which has created a fictional town forum and virtual community members. The town is mostly unchanging and prefers mundane posts and commentary over extreme drama and extraordinary events. The sub has also recently added a discord where people are able to participate in more lengthy roleplay, discussions, and illustrate their character more for other users.

R/HaveWeMeta is the meta subreddit for r/HaveWeMet where users can break character, ask questions, and introduce themselves as their real life self. Newcomers will often use this as an introduction to the community learning of various complaints, history, and character development. This is the most illuminating place to go to learn more about how the sub operates and who the people are behind the screen it is encouraged to look at before participating.