On March 4, a Trump appointee at the Department of Veterans Affairs circulated a memo to senior leadership. The agency, it said, would “move out aggressively” to improve efficiency, with an “initial objective” of cutting the work force to 2019 levels.
The next morning, someone posted a copy of this “reduction in force” memo to a Reddit group called VeteransAffairs, an online community of 19,000 members. The copy was difficult to follow, a sequence of photos taken of the memo on a screen, but the message was clear enough: Some 80,000 jobs would be cut.
Questions and comments poured in, some bewildered, some frantic. The agency had half a million employees at hospitals, clinics, call lines and regional benefit offices that served veterans across the country. Who would be fired? Was this the end of the V.A.’s medical research? How would this affect wait times for medical appointments?
No one had solid answers, just informed speculation. Livelihoods and veterans’ well-being were at stake, so the vibe was somber. But there was still room for dark humor.
“We gotta pay for Greenland somehow,” one person joked.
Reddit, a bare-bones social media site organized around more than 100,000 niche communities called subreddits, has long catered to people with quirky shared interests, whether Bitcoin, fly-fishing or photos of Keanu Reeves being awesome.
It is unlike other social media platforms. Instagram and TikTok offer videos and influencers; Reddit is text-heavy and aggressively unsuited to building star power. Facebook and LinkedIn require real names; anonymity reigns on Reddit, minimizing egos and consequences.