It’s that time of year again. Time to scour strangers’ Reddit comment history, or peruse their Amazon wish list, and buy them something (hopefully) awesome. That might include a brand new laptop or a hand-painted Mario portrait or maybe just $1,500 in cash. Cause who couldn’t use some hard cash, right?
It’s Reddit’s Secret Santa, preparing to break it’s own recently minted Guinness World Record.
If you’re not familiar with how secret santa works, it’s simple: Sign up, get matched with another redditor, read through their Reddit posting history, and send them something cool for Christmas.
It might sound complicated, but as redditor Veronia explained in a comment earlier today, all it takes is a bit of creative Web stalking
It’s simple and… it also feels a bit like a game. Day out and day in people on this site sign up to their favourite subreddits, comment with hints about their personalities and likes. We share stories and anecdotes about that one song we love or that movie character we’d like to become/make love to/dress up as.
I’ve done many exchanges by now and going through someone’s post history isn’t a chore, or a difficulty. You’re looking for that comment gold or that google find that links your match to his or hers Sherlock twitter feed MsCumberbatch (just made that up). And that’s when you know what to get them. Their best gift ever.
It’s the event’s fourth year and, like every previous year, this promises to be the biggest one yet. As Reddit grows, so does secret santa, and Reddit just won’t stop ballooning in size, boasting 46.6 million unique visitors and 3.8 billion page views in October.
Indeed, Secret Santa easily smashed the record books last year, with 30,000 participants. Will it break its own record year? That certainly seems likely. The blog post announcing the event has already rocketed to Reddit’s front page.
In less than six hours, 20,000 people have signed up. And it’s not even Thanksgiving yet.
Photo via RedditGifts