About r/self
In its own words:
A place to post discussions, questions, or anything else you like.
Community guide
r/self (#612, about 1.8 million subscribers) — A place to post discussions, questions, or anything else you like. A recent sample averaged 67 posts a day (~100% text). Its public rules include: Be excellent to each other.; No witch hunts.; No advertising/self promotion of any kind.; No requests for assistance or fundraising allowed.; No posts or comments threatening self harm. It is listed under “Lifestyles”.
What belongs here
Stay inside the room’s stated scope rather than adjacent fandoms or general off-topic dumps. Self-promotion and advertising are tightly limited—read those rules before linking your own channel, shop, or site. Low-effort memes or empty shitposts are commonly removed—add context that fits the room’s purpose. Civility and anti-harassment rules are explicit; personal attacks get you removed regardless of how right you think you are.
How it differs from lookalikes
The length of the public rule list is itself a signal: skim all of them once before assuming defaults from similar communities. Submission type is set to “self”—link/text expectations may differ from open “any” rooms.
Practical pointers
Read the current sidebar/rules on Reddit before posting; rules can change.
The community was created on Feb 6, 2008, which makes it 18 years old. Since Nov 2, 2026, it has gained 1,067 subscribers (+0.06%). It sits just behind r/Screenwriting (#610) and ahead of r/UrbanHell (#612) in our ranking.
What sets r/self apart
r/self is far more text-driven than most big subreddits: 100% of its recent posts are text posts, against a median of 35% across the Top 100. Its rhythm is strongly tied to time zones: the busiest hour (23:00 UTC) sees about 4.5× as many posts as the quietest (09:00 UTC).
Subscriber growth
Between Sep 19, 2026 and Nov 9, 2026, r/self went up from 1,760,008 to 1,768,334 subscribers (+8.3K, +0.47%). That is about 163 new members per day. The chart shows 10 weekly subscriber counts.
Top posts on r/self this week
What the community upvoted most over the last seven days, as ranked by Reddit (collected Nov 7, 2026).
- i gave $100 to a homeless man and i regret itu/akyai · Nov 3 · text post
- I just found out my brother has stage 4 canceru/haddock420 · Nov 2 · text post
- Lonelyu/Ok_Hamster_7357 · Nov 1 · text post
- Met up with an online friend and it went just as I feared it would. Now I'm quite depressed.u/AnotherPerishedSoul · Nov 6 · text post
- I didn't realize how lonely I was until my cat started sleeping on my chest every nightu/Jason_Doyle · Nov 7 · text post
- So alone.u/Nolar_Lumpspread · Oct 31 · text post
- I can see why people become alcoholicsu/AppropriateMight1 · Nov 1 · text post
- Part of why I’m bad at socializing is that I lack curiosity about people and dislike question based conversations.u/Ferocious_Kittyrose · Nov 1 · text post
- You really don’t matter as much as you think you dou/OnYourLeft04 · Nov 1 · text post
- Mind you, I'm Latino... But nothing makes me feel more 🫠 than when a southern Black woman calls me "baby." I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels this way.u/_PaulM · Nov 7 · text post
All-time top posts
The highest-ranked posts in the history of r/self, from 2015 to 2025, ranked by Reddit.
- My son is a hateful incel, and I just cannot save him or defend him anymore.u/Sonshinecloudyday · Nov 10, 2018 · 55,977 points · 9,154 comments · text post
- Hi everyone. Victoria here.u/chooter · Jul 8, 2015 · 8,363 points · 3,241 comments · text post
- I went on a date with a self described ‘loner.’ I’m never doing that againu/D_2d · Mar 30, 2025 · text post
- Saw something in my girlfriend’s Notes app she didn’t want me to see…u/supermarioshirts · Nov 4, 2024 · text post
- I remember when Trump won in 2016. His victory feels darker this time.Jan 21, 2025 · text post
- The male loneliness epidemic is a self-pitying problem and there's an easy solution.Mar 13, 2025 · text post
- Fuck Donald Trumpu/Paracortex · Nov 3, 2020 · text post
- My $70,000 college debt was just forgiven.u/bemridoll · Apr 15, 2025 · text post
- You're being targeted by disinformation networks that are vastly more effective than you realize. And they're making you more hateful and depressed.u/walkandtalkk · Nov 11, 2024 · text post
- I (F26) followed internet advice and asked out my "lonely" zoomer best friend (M25). He rejected me.u/Present-Elephant-575 · Dec 5, 2024 · text post
What r/self talks about
We read the titles of 496 recent posts (Oct 29–Nov 5), the words that come up most are “life”, “feel”, “friend”, “friends” and “bad”. Other frequent themes are hate, job, person, stop, real and experience. Recurring phrases include “crazy drug”, “drug experience”, “holy fucking” and “fucking shit”. By format, 100% are text posts.
Activity and best time to post
r/self gets about 67 new posts a day. The public archive holds 536,195 posts and 7,202,106 comments in total, about 13.4 comments per post. Last week the busiest day was Monday (87 posts) and the quietest was Friday (53). Posting peaks around 23:00 UTC and is lowest around 09:00 UTC.
Rules of r/self
The moderators of r/self list 11 rules. In short:
- Be excellent to each other.
- No witch hunts.
- No advertising/self promotion of any kind.
- No requests for assistance or fundraising allowed.
- No posts or comments threatening self harm.
- No NSFW imagery. Discussing NSFW content is fine, as long as it's tagged.
- No misleading or fearmongering news or politics
- Self-hate rant posts
- Commonly posted topics/disallowed topics
- No generalized Bigotry
How to join
Open reddit.com/r/self and press “Join”. Read the community rules in the sidebar before you post: every subreddit is run by its own volunteer moderators.
Frequently asked questions
How many members does r/self have?
r/self has 1,768,334 subscribers (Nov 9, 2026), which makes it the #611 safe-for-work subreddit in the SubMouse ranking. It added 8,326 members between Sep 19, 2026 and Nov 9, 2026.
How old is r/self?
r/self was created on Feb 6, 2008, so it has been around for 18 years. The oldest post in the public archive is from Feb 7, 2008.
How active is r/self?
Very active: r/self gets about 67 new posts a day (average of the last four weeks). Over its lifetime the archive counts 536,195 posts and 7,202,106 comments. In a sample of 496 recent posts we counted 402 different authors.
When is r/self most active?
Based on post counts from Oct 29, 2026 to Nov 4, 2026, the busiest day was Monday and the quietest Friday, and most posts arrive around 23:00 UTC, with the fewest around 09:00 UTC. More posts also means more competition, so a quieter hour can help a post get noticed.
What is r/self about?
The community describes itself as: “A place to post discussions, questions, or anything else you like.” Recent post titles often mention life, feel, friend, friends and bad. Most posts are text posts (100%).
Is r/self safe for work?
Yes. Reddit does not mark r/self as an 18+ (NSFW) community, and its own rules forbid NSFW content. SubMouse lists safe-for-work subreddits only.
How do I post on r/self?
Join the community on Reddit first, then use “Create post”. r/self accepts text posts only. It has 11 posted rules, starting with: “Be excellent to each other.”; “No witch hunts.”; “No advertising/self promotion of any kind.”. Moderators remove posts that break the rules, so read them in the sidebar before posting.
Which communities are like r/self?
Communities with similar topics include r/raisedbynarcissists (1.1M) and r/ifyoulikeblank (1.5M).
Stats from public data (data updated Nov 9, 2026; activity, rules and archive totals via the Arctic Shift archive, Nov 6, 2026; top posts from Reddit’s public feeds). Point and comment counts are archive snapshots and can be lower than on Reddit today. SubMouse is an independent directory and is not affiliated with Reddit or the moderators of r/self.