“When you remove the pressure to perform, you allow people to show up as their true selves — messy, real, well-rounded,” says Matt Klein, Reddit’s head of consumer growth research & foresight. “When you remove the behaviors that seek applause, the appeal becomes depth and nuance,” he adds. He cites the ability for Reddit communities to “downvote” certain posts and comments as the opposite of most platforms designed for amplitude. “This becomes a much-needed counter-signal or “brake”; therefore, bad information, slop, low-effort noise, or inauthentic behavior sinks to the bottom of the conversation, while helpful, additive comments rise to the top. People only share their thoughts when they are deeply invested and care about the topic.”
People aren’t just spending more time on these smaller platforms, but they’re having the messy, authentic interactions that actually cultivate something new.
Can brands enter without breaking the spell?
For brands, these communities are gold dust: places where tastes emerge before they become trends. But they owe much of their appeal to feeling insulated from the commercial logic of larger platforms. The question isn’t just how brands should participate, but whether they should at all.
“Successfully engaging in these communities requires significantly more effort, attention, and nuance than brands are used to investing — but not necessarily more money,” says Anu Lingala, author of the “What’s Anu” trend strategy Substack newsletter.
“People still love and crave beautiful visual campaigns, but in a world where we are bombarded by visuals, their effect becomes more potent when contextualized within, for instance, a newsletter editorial that demands the viewer to slow down for a moment. The general cultural ethos we are moving toward is less-but-more: less content production, but more interesting and thoughtful concepts.”
Tumblr’s popular ‘The Art of Movie Stills’ page.
Photo: Tumblr.
From the platform side, of course, there’s only so long a business can survive without advertising. Despite its authentic, non-commercial rep, Reddit’s 69% revenue growth to $2.2 billion in 2025 was “purely driven by advertising”, the platform’s COO Jen Wong recently told Vogue Business. Adverts on Reddit are designed to mimic organic posts, and can be placed within user feeds (like the home feed, popular feeds, and within subreddits), as well as directly inside comment threads. But with the looming threat of a downvote, Klein says success all hinges on brands putting in more time and effort than they’re used to on other platforms that favor volume.
