How Reddit Became The Divorce Whisperer Of The Internet

An analysis of 52 million comments on r/relationship_advice found a strong negativity bias. Users overwhelmingly default to encouraging posters to break up or “set boundaries” rather than suggesting more nuanced advice, such as communicating or compromising. Over time, there’s also been a measurable decline in advice to give people space, now defaulting to “cut contact.”

The dataset wasn’t filtered for AI-generated posts, so it’s impossible to know how many of these comments or even original posts were real. People have debated whether this change can be ascribed to cultural change, a change in the online environment, increasing trolling, or botting and LLMs, and while the jury is still out, the most extreme stories tend to be upvoted and circulated the most. This likely incentivizes bots to plant fake stories for engagement.

Reddit has long had this problem: anonymous users posting inflammatory, one-sided stories that later turn out to be entirely fabricated. The problem predates bots and AI, but given the absurdity of many of the stories that gain traction on there, most have started assuming that everything on Reddit is fake. Nevertheless, there’s still a takeaway here, because even fake stories and fake comments provoke real communal reactions.

Seeking advice for a relationship in turmoil on Reddit, based on this data, is like asking for permission to terminate. You know what the response will be. The fact that you feel compelled to seek advice online from strangers is already not a good sign for the state of your union, and that might play a large role in the forum’s negativity bias—an assumption that, “If you had a relationship worth saving, you wouldn’t be asking me, Mr. Cynical Dating Advice Giver.”

You know the sorts of communities these forums attract: they’re not coming from healthy, stable, intact families. Those people are busy cooking dinner for their children. They don’t have the spare time to dole out free life advice on the secret to a thriving marriage. You know who does have time, though? The most miserable, single, antisocial misanthropes on the far corners of the internet, attracted like flies to honey, ensuring you “stand your ground” and do something drastic.

This thread on r/unpopularopinion has hundreds of upvotes. The poster says, “If someone is posting about relationship problems on Reddit, they’re usually at the end of their rope, questioning their judgment, and very upset. This happens when the relationship has been going bad, usually for a long time before the post.” They conclude, “Of course, the next move is usually to break up! In most cases, that is the only reasonable course of action.”

But it’s not just Reddit. There are entire online ecosystems built on ideological coping mechanisms vying for your attention, then your allegiance. There’s the manosphere: advice on how to “command respect,” become an alpha, and ascend to Gigachad status. An endless churn of ragebait about modern women, usually delivered from Captain Scare-the-Hoes with a podcast mic, lurking outside the club waiting to ambush a tipsy 22-year-old for a viral clip.

Then there’s the femosphere, convincing women that virtually everything is a red flag, that every man they’ve ever dated is a narcissist, any guy that doesn’t immediately think they’re a catch is “intimidated” by them, and the age-old relic of 2010s feminism: men are just trash. That’s why you have to con them, use them before they can use you, be a hypergamous gold digger. They’ll accuse you of being one anyway.

Men are portrayed as walking wallets, unfaithful husbands, and unreliable fathers who can’t communicate, so the game becomes about making women paranoid about the quality of their partner—convincing them they’re on borrowed time so that they feel justified in extracting value while they can. This is the transactional age of relationships: an ironic return to tradition by reverse-engineering heterosexuality, far removed from its most human qualities.

Sure, I’ll be the masculine provider, but I’m doing so with utter contempt for the prize I’m supposed to protect. Sure, I’ll dote on you, I’ll look hot, never form wrinkles, and keep my body tight so my pretty privilege can earn me your provision so long as I deem it’s the best economic prospect of the time. But don’t expect your meals to be cooked with love, nor for me to submit my soul to you in earnest. Obviously, the air we’re breathing in is toxic to begin with.

The more divisive and absolutist the content, the more traction it gets. These communities volley back and forth, countersignaling each other while they build audiences of righteously angry victims of the opposite sex, filling their heads with paranoia. “If he wanted to, he would.” “She’s probably sleeping around.” What else is new, right? Only, this content thrives because of the precarious situation men and women find themselves in.

Evolving gender roles and economic positions leave people unsure of where exactly chivalry is compatible with equality, whether a man still needs to provide and a woman still needs to nurture, and in precisely what ways. How are men and women even supposed to communicate anymore, given these conditions? People have different ideas about the answer, leaving them with polarizing experiences and a lot of opinions about them. Naturally, these conditions make the current dating landscape difficult to navigate when virtually everything you do is perceived as malevolence rather than a misunderstanding.

At the end of the day, though, people are entitled to their dating preferences. What they’re willing to tolerate, how high or low their standards are, and who they choose to associate with are entirely up to them. As much as I believe in encouraging people to make choices that are more conducive to finding a compatible match, there are some things that might be non-negotiable.

Maybe that’s differing political views. Not everyone is built for cognitive flexibility; this is more or less a byproduct of personality configuration. So, as much as I may cringe when some liberal girl with blue hair and a septum piercing writes off a perfectly good date because she finds out he’s politically moderate rather than a raging liberal, it might be best for both of them that they find people more compatible with their worldviews.

Some might call that hypocritical. I did, after all, just defend dropping a guy for dry texting. (To clarify: it wasn’t dryness alone; it was the passive-aggressive subtext—a real risk not worth taking.) So, let me reiterate my case here: I find dating advice to be a kind of Wild West of useful and goofy ideas. Some people are so lost and desperate for guidance in the absence of any real-world experience that the proliferation of this content has been a saving grace for them. For others, information hazards are a one-way ticket to the black pill. Ultimately, it’s your responsibility to vet information on your own.

Use your intuition. If it doesn’t pass the smell test or is coming from a questionable source, maybe they’re not the final authority on how to handle a romantic situation. Speculative dating advice mostly affects hypotheticals: who you might date, what red flags you might avoid. Technically, no one is being harmed because no relationship exists yet. All you’re risking is a maybe—a hypothetical could-be you might over-cautiously filter out.

Where I would suggest you exercise great caution is in seeking guidance for your very real, committed relationship. If you’ve been together for years and truly want it to work out, do not seek advice from the online mob. Forum dwellers and social media users, with their negativity bias in tow, are informed by their own negative experiences and half-processed traumas they’re all too happy to project onto your relationship. I’ve seen plenty of proud cynics admit they don’t even care about the context; their recommendation is always “leave him.”

It’s hard to say what their reasons are. Maybe it’s their way of evening the karmic score of the world around them, wanting others to be as miserable as they are. It could be female intrasexual competition (or, in the male case, intersexual competition). But even when these people aren’t bitter pessimists maliciously hoping no one else finds love, outsiders simply have no skin in the game. Their advice might be their way of acting out a fantasy of exercising agency after years of failing to take control of their own lives, or they haven’t tried to legitimately empathize with your position, so their dismissive “break up” advice hasn’t been a proper weighing of consequences.

This alone is why you shouldn’t give the public square any say over your relationship. They don’t share your bond, your history, the years of building chemistry and weathered storms. They’re hardly interested in maintaining a bond they don’t have, in salvaging a shared life they haven’t experienced. It makes no difference to them whether you stay together; their life will go on. If their comments are the final death knell that convinces you to leave the man you thought you’d share the rest of your life and have children with, they’ll never know it. They’ll rise for breakfast and have the waffles while you’re too distraught to sleep or eat because you made a decision that forever changes the trajectory of your life.

Paul Skallas (Lindyman) said it best: “Once you’re in the relationship domain, you’re in a very subjective world of past agreements, unspoken social rules, and precedent based on history. It’s hard for someone on the outside to appreciate it.” And appreciate it, they don’t. To them, your love life is nothing more than a thought experiment. The advice they give isn’t calibrated for your own well-being; it’s calibrated for their entertainment. It’s easy to undervalue a relationship, even a marriage—a family—when you’re not in it, when it’s just some abstract concept to you.

Forums seldom do anyone any good unless you’re a victim of abuse and your subconscious is begging you to gain the courage to leave—to acknowledge the severity of the situation, have others validate your experiences, and encourage you to demand more. That’s when forums are indispensable—in situations that you already know, deep in your gut, are profoundly wrong. I think the Redditors know that too, and that’s who they assume they’re talking to.