Reddit's 2021 recap confirms r/WallStreetBets and crypto dominated the social platform this year
It might seems like ages ago now — after all, time moves strangely in pandemic — but the Reddit, Wall Street, and crypto craze was a legitimate world-shifting, global event.
Reddit released its year-end recap blog on Wednesday and confirmed that, yes, that was a huge moment for the social platform. The top three most upvoted posts of 2021 were related to the Reddit community's stock and crypto efforts. The most upvoted post of the year was on the subreddit r/wallstreetbets and showed a billboard in Times Square promoting GameStop's stock. The next two posts in the top three? Also from r/wallstreetbets.
Here were the top five most upvoted posts, according to Reddit.
In case you somehow forgot, the Reddit community — mainly the r/wallstreetbets subreddit — sparked a massive upending of how Wall Street typically works. Focusing on stocks like GameStop, AMC, and others, redditors basically outclassed massive hedge funds that had bet against this companies. This craze of regular people massively affecting the economy led to a crypto boom, where even the jokey cryptocurrency called Dogecoin skyrocketed in value.
But, as Reddit pointed out, it wasn't all stocks and crypto on the site. Its year end video showed off a bunch of the viral moments from 2021.
Ask Me Anythings, aka AMAs, are also a hugely popular section of Reddit. Basically redditors get to ask people whatever they want. The most popular of the year, according to the company, were from a lobster diver who got swallowed by a whale, Bill Gates, and the executive producer of Bethesda games.
Reddit also shared the most popular posts and biggest moments for things like sports, music, and TV. (Shocker: Marvel and Star Wars are both popular and divisive.) You can check out the full post here.
But as the company wrote, "the most notable moments on Reddit were when redditors took their comments, comradery, conversations, and more from URL to IRL." There was no better example of that than the financial system getting upended by some people with an internet connection, online friends, and free time.
Topics Reddit
Tim Marcin is an Associate Editor on the culture team at Mashable, where he mostly digs into the weird parts of the internet. You'll also see some coverage of memes, tech, sports, trends, and the occasional hot take. You can find him on Bluesky (sometimes), Instagram (infrequently), or eating Buffalo wings (as often as possible).
