I logged into Reddit for 121 days. I'm already tired of it

Reddit was, and maybe still is, considered a golden source of information. I have no doubt it still is for certain niches and industries. But the subreddits I joined were mostly about SaaS, side projects, solo builders using AI, and a few big ones like the Claude subreddit.

I mostly joined for information. This time, I decided to check in every single day for about four months and see what I learned, or what turned out to be useful.

121 days later, I'm sooooooo tired of it.

Why I can't say it out loud

I can't really say that on those subreddits. Or at least not too loudly.

At some point, I might want to use Reddit for TWO Docs, or for Study Brew, my note-taking app for language learners. So I have to think carefully about how I show up there.

That means there's a restraint in how I comment, and in what I comment. I'm not writing freely. I'm writing like someone who might need the room later.

And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

The one time Reddit worked

To be fair, the best experience I've had on Reddit so far came from a single comment. When I built Stupid Hit, I commented on r/SideProject (I think), and that one comment drove around 1K visitors to the site in a week or so.

Read also: $12, a typo, and the dumbest website I've built

One comment. No post, no launch, no pitch.

That's the version of Reddit everyone is chasing. It's also why it's so crowded now.

Reddit also gave me one of my ideas. Liyo started because I kept reading the same questions over and over. What's your stack? What do you use? Which subscriptions?

I've kept TWO mostly out of the spotlight. I think I mentioned it twice, both times in a comment, without naming the product or sharing the link. I don't want to aggressively market it until the iPad app is ready. Or at least the Mac app.

Read also: How do you vibe code a Mac app? Part 4: limits & 90% confidence

Same questions, same people

Logging in for four months straight got my brain so fucking fried.

The same questions keep coming back, to the point where it starts to feel like clout chasing.

The posts asking you to "share what you're building" are often made by the same people, every single day.

And the funniest part is that I see those same people constantly commenting to promote their own app. Different thread, same comment.

It makes me wonder how much time they spend on Reddit. And how they hope to get users by repeating the same comment everywhere, instead of building real, stable, slow-growth marketing.

But that's fair. Fair to them. It's just an observation.

The story that's really a pitch

The real death of those subreddits isn't those posts. It's the ones that "tell a story" just to pitch a business, an app, or a service.

You know the shape. Someone was burned out, or broke, or about to give up. Then the infamous phrase (AI-written) comes: I built a thing.

Then come the lessons, numbered, with bold headers. And somewhere near the bottom, almost by accident, there's a link.

It's easy to see through. Just like those Medium posts that get me so tilted. Similar titles, same lineups, same phrases. "What actually matters." "I built the thing." It shows they're fucking ramming it all through AI without careful thought.

When someone calls it out, the defense is usually "I'm not good at English." But they all build vibe-coded sites and apps in English, for the English market.

I'd appreciate their fake pitch disguised as a "playbook" a lot more if they wrote it themselves, or at least added real details.

A few clumsy sentences with real numbers would say more than a polished story that could be about anyone.

Seasoned redditors see through it. Newbies fall for it. And that's exactly why people keep posting their BS on those forums: it works. Just often enough to keep doing it.

A source of complaints, gold and AI

If I had to classify Reddit, or at least the subreddits I read, it's mostly complaints. No users, no sales, no motivation.

Once in a million, there's a golden thread with insights that make me save it or read it twice.

The rest is flooded with AI-written pitches.

I read Reddit like a spam filter now

The weird part is that I do it too now. I don't read the content or the context first. I scan for red flags. Is this AI-written? If it is, I don't even bother.

I think that comes from using AI all day, every day. I use it to polish and grammar-check my own writing, so I know what it sounds like. But there's a difference between that and opening a chat and typing "write me a sales pitch." Kinda.

The cost is that I've probably skipped real posts because one sentence sounded off.

When anything could be fake, nothing gets the benefit of the doubt anymore. That's what slop does to a forum. It makes the honest posts pay for it.

Reddit scares me a bit

I don't know. Reddit scares me in a way.

On one hand, it's a great platform to promote whatever you have, if you do it the right way. On the other hand, I'm not in the mood to read dozens, if not hundreds, of toxic comments written out of spite.

Someone calling my docs editor AI slop, for example. Even though the entire journey behind it has been documented here, post by post. It's not just a random product.

That's the other side of the slop problem. When half the forum is AI-generated, "AI slop" becomes the default insult. And it sticks to everyone, including the people who did the work.

I don't have the mental bandwidth for that right now. Not while I'm this focused on building the podcasts and the native Mac app for TWO.

Read also: Apple Numbers saved my podcast workflow

Catching myself

One thing I noticed is that I almost got too comfortable commenting negatively. Most likely pulled in by other comments. The tone of a thread is contagious. Read enough cynical replies and your next one sounds the same.

So I fucking stopped.

Now I comment once in a while. Short, but I try to be more constructive toward other users, without attaching myself to any of them.

Founders selling to founders

That last part is on purpose. Those circles have a pattern. Everyone promotes, and everyone tries to sell to each other. Typical indie hacker behavior.

The problem is that selling to solo devs and indie builders will always get you harsher feedback than selling to regular consumers or businesses.

Builders look at everything from a technical point of view. They see the stack, the template, the shortcut. End users simply don't care as much. They care whether it works.

And builders are rarely the ones who pay. I learned that with Liyo. No solo dev will pay for it, which is why I stopped building it.

Read also: Pivot, persevere and cut loose: making decisions

So you end up with a room full of sellers and almost no buyers. Everyone's pitching, everyone's waiting for someone else to pull out their wallet. Feedback goes around, attention goes around. Money barely does.

I think it keeps going because it feels like traction. Upvotes and replies from other builders feel like validation. But they're not from the people who'll ever pay.

Why I don't do DMs

That's the number one reason I'm fine giving feedback in a comment, but I refuse to start dozens of DMs with other founders. I'd be stuck talking to people who aren't interested at all.

Most of the DMs I've gotten so far were from other builders, opening with something like: "Hey, I saw you're also a solo builder, maybe you want to take a look at what I've done."

That alone is tiring. And a signal that Reddit should stay at arm's length. At any given time.

I know that at scale, you'll find a few true connections. But that's something you cultivate organically, not through sheer force in DMs.

Where Reddit fits now

Reddit isn't the place for me as a user. At most, it's somewhere to scroll for five minutes a day and maybe spot an interesting topic.

Or maybe I should leave those SaaS and side project subreddits altogether and join a few built around hobbies. Ones with zero connection to building, software, blogging, or founders.

Final note

I don't regret the 121 days. I needed to see it every day, from the inside, to know what I was looking at.

And what I was looking at, most of the time, wasn't written for me. It was written to be found by anyone who might click a link. Including the posts asking what I'm building.

Reddit will probably still matter (maybe) for TWO someday. When it does, I want to show up with a finished Mac app and a post I wrote myself, rough edges included.

Tomorrow is day 122. I'll probably still log in. Just not for as long.