Not everyone knows that you can check a user’s profile and post history on reddit. It’s quick and easy and I’ll tell you how and why you should do it.
You can learn a lot about a user by checking their users’s profile and post history. But before i get into the why let’s first get into the how. It’s relatively easy to do and can be done on the desktop site as well as the mobile app. Here’s how it’s done:
How to check out the user’s profile page
If you are are the main page listings of a subreddit, under each post title you will see a line that says “Posted by u/LordOhun xx minutes ago”. Or if you already opened the post you will see this same line at the top of the post.
You want to place your cursor over the posters name (ex. u/lordohun) and click on it. This will bring you to the poster’s profile page. At the top of the profile page you will see three tabs.
1 – Overview – an overview of the posts and comments the poster has made. This view can be hard to read so I recommend that you click on one of the other two tabs
2 – Posts – This is a history of the posts that the reddit user has made. Note that it will only show posts that are still active. If the user deleted a post they will not show up here.
3 – Comments – This is a list of all th comments that the user has made.
In addition to the post and comment history you can also look to the far right of the screen and it will tell you how much Karm the user has (Karma will be explained in another article), and the date that the user opened their account.
Although this doesn’t seem like a ton of information about the user, there is enough info there that can give you some insights into who the user is and what they are into.
But what if I was the one who made the post and I want to check the user’s profile who is Direct Messaging me?
The process is similar if you are on the desktop website but it is a little trickier if you are on the Reddit Mobile App.
If you are on the Reddit Desktop site all you have to do is go to your “messages page” and in the message that the user has sent you you will see a line that says “from u/obligatorypostersname sent 30min ago” All you have to do is click on the user’s name and it will take you to their profile
The Mobile app doesn’t work the same way. You will notice that when you are in the “Messages” tab you aren’t about to click the user’s name who messaged you. This can be a pain in the ass but the only way it’s possible to navigate to the user’s profile is to remember the person’s name, then go to the search tab. The search tab can be accessed by clicking the second icon on the bottom of the app. The first icon is a silhouette of the “Reddit Head”. The second icon looks like two circles and two squares. That’s the one you want. (The third icon is a pencil which is used to writing posts. The 4th icon is a chat bubble and is used to access the instant messenger. And the 5th icon is an envelope which accesses your private messages)
Once you are on the search tab you need to manually type in the search field the exact user’s name. Be sure to include the “u/” part of their name. Click search and that should get you to the user’s profile page.
Ok, now that I found the User’s profile page how will this help me? The Why.
The first thing I usually check when i get to their profile page is their post history. I look for a few different things.
1- I look to see if all the posts are listing the same gender and the same age. If a poster has different age’s listed this is a huge red flag that they aren’t legit. The second I see this i just move on and don’t bother trying to interact with that user ever again.
2- Then I look for location tags and if they are consistent also. Once again if they are one day posting with a tag that says “#Germany”, then 3 hours later it says “#Canada”, this is a red flag and i don’t waste my time with this bullshit artist.
3- The next thing I look for is if any of the posts had pictures attached. If they do I check to see if they are consistent, as well as if the person is someone I would be attracted to. This is just another way to learn a bit about the user.
4- Then i will flip through their posts and comments and see what they are all about. Reading the comments someone posted can give you some insight into who they are. Especially if they use the same account for their “safe for work” activities as well as their “not safe for work” activities on reddit. (I highly recommend you use different accounts and you can read my blog post about why.)
5- After all that I will take a close look at how much Karma they have and when they opened their account. If the person has little to no Karma it can show that they don’t participate much on reddit. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A lot of guys and girls on reddit are lurkers. Meaning they look at a lot of posts but don’t ever respond and don’t make their own posts. I don’t see this as being a bad thing or an indicator that the poster is a scammer. It’s just something I take a mental note of.
If the user just opened their account the same day they are messaging you it could mean 2 things.
1 – it could mean that they are using a throw away account that they opened just to message you today. (That’s somewhat flattering)
2 – Or it could mean they are a spammer.
Like all things on reddit you need to take all this info with a grain of salt. The users are reddit are like a riddle that need to be figured out. Checking someone’s profile is just a tool to help you decipher the riddle. I can sometimes gain a lot of insight by checking out the posts a user made or the comments they make on other subreddits. It all becomes pieces of the puzzle and it can help dictate how I go about communicating with the user and the angles i use to hook up with them.
“If you learn to enjoy every step of the game,the times you lose are just as rewarding as the times you win” – Lord O
If you have any questions about something you saw in a user’s profile that raised a red flag, let me know in the comments below and I will help you “crack the code”.
If you want to see what a successful Reddit Casual Encounter Hookup look like check out Lord O’s Little Black Book Of Successful Reddit Posts.