Reddit’s 2021 recap features Helicopter Jeff Bezos, a grandpa’s chipmunk selfie and more
Platform asks 'Is it gonna get any weirder?' in year-end review film from R/GA
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Reddit asks, “Is it gonna get any weirder?” in its annual recap film looking back on the twelve crazy months of 2021.
The frenetically joyful spot assembles the year’s most popular trends and happenings on the social media platform, including a helicopter version of Jeff Bezos, when a grandpa took his first selfie with a chipmunk, when Redditors crushed Wall Street and crashed the site of nonprofit One Simple Wish to fulfill the wishes of foster kids, that really tall duck named Long Boi, “Squid Game,” “Wandavision,” AMAs (Ask Me Anythings) with Carole Baskin, Kal Penn and Nick Offerman, and a whole lot more. There are even poignant moments—a baby boy with a hearing aid hears his dad’s voice for the first time, people hug once again after coming out of lockdown, a funny and surprising proposal. It’s all set to a lively, catchy original track by SNGL featuring Molly Moore.
The film ends with a note of gratitude to the Reddit community: “Thanks for being here when things get weird out there.”
The recap was created out of R/GA, which signed on as Reddit’s agency of record last year. Since then, the agency created Reddit’s first recap film last year, the “Superb Owl” Super Bowl hijack, a reworked brand push and a Pride campaign.
The new film breaks as Reddit unveiled its biggest trends and data from the past year.
From Jan. 1 through Nov. 9, the platform saw more than 366 million posts, a 19% jump from 2020. Comments also rose 12% to 2.3 billion, while the platform saw a small rise (1%) in total upvotes to 46 billion.
The most upvoted posts in 2021, not surprisingly, were on the r/wallstreetbets community:
- r/wallstreetbets: Times Square right now (431K upvotes)
- r/wallstreetbets: UPVOTE so everyone sees we got SUPPORT (322K upvotes)
- r/wallstreetbets: GME YOLO update — Jan 28 2021 (286K upvotes)
The most popular theme on the platform was cryptocurrency. According to a company statement, Reddit has been home to more than 500 crypto communities for more than a decade. In 2021, the top five most viewed of those were r/dogecoin, r/superstonk. r/cryptocurrency, r/amcstock, and r/bitcoin.
Other popular subjects included gaming, sports, weddings, health and fitness and more:
Reddit's Most Popular Themes in 2021
- Cryptocurrency
- Gaming
- Sports
- Weddings
- Health and Fitness
- Food and Drink
- Movies and Television
