Karma Whore

About

“Karma Whore” is a label used to describe someone who seeks to raise one’s social standing within an online community by pandering to the stereotypical prejudices or trends that are widely accepted by its members, which includes activities like reposting popular content and linking to websites with overwhelmingly positive reputation. The phrase can be applied whether someone is posting in this manner on purpose or if other users just assume they are doing so based on their history.

Origin

The term “karma whore” was used as early as January 2nd, 2000^[1] on the tech news site Slashdot in a reposted news story about the filming techniques employed in the 1999 American sci-fi film The Matrix. In the comments, an argument ensued over the authenticity of Slashdotter Signal11’s karma rating after a user under the Slashdot alias Anonymous Coward noted the strange discrepancy between the total count of karma and average scores of his posts.

Karma System

Karma is a unit of measurement used to gauge a community member’s trustworthiness or the degree of positive reputation based on a trust metric. The term “karma” was first introduced by Slashdot in the late 1990s and has been since adopted by many other virtual online communities to encourage group effectiveness and friendly interactions.

Spread

The term was mentioned again on January 14th, 2000 in an off-topic comment titled “The Troll Bill of Rights.”^[3] Ten days later, the phrase was first defined on the online writing community Everything2^[2], where it was noted that Slashdot moderators focus on quality, not personal prejudices. By April that year, “karma whoring” was included in an explanation of the ways people troll on Slashdot.^[4] In July 2000, the phrase was first defined in print by Wired magazine^[5] as “someone who posts messages shamelessly on Slashdot, where karma points are given based on the quality of the post.”

In November 2001, Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Wil Wheaton used the label on his blog^[6] in referring to himself after asking Ben Edlund, the comic book artist of The Tick, if he could appear on Edlund’s show in a Slashdot AMA.^[7] The post received the highest possible rating of 5/5. In 2003, “karma whore” was added to Urban Dictionary^[8] three times, with the last definition declaring karma whores a “dead breed.” Throughout the decade, the term appeared on a handful of forums with karma systems, including the Rooster Teeth forums^[9], the Grand Theft Auto forums^[10], the xkcd forums^[11] and the MyDeathSpace forums.^[12]

On Reddit

The term “karma whore” has been also used to describe similar practices on Reddit as early as February 2009 with a YouTube video criticizing Redditors who repost xkcd comics or share links about Richard Dawkins in the Atheism subreddit.

In April 2010, the website KarmaWhores.net^[13] was registered to track Redditors with the most karma on the site. As of October 2012, the site tracks more than 17,000 users with more than 253 million karma points combined. In April 2011, a single topic blog titled Reddit Karma Whore^[14] was launched, offering several tips on how to gain karma in the /r/pics subreddit ranging from reposting popular content to using advice animal style image macros.

Advice Animal

In August 2012, Redditor tankyoucomeagain posted the first advice animal derivative titled Karma Whore^[15], featuring a women leaning over into a car window and the caption “I’m actually a political moderate but I’m liberal if that’s what you’re upvoting for.” As of October 2012, there are approximately 1500 instances of Karma Whore on Quickmeme^[16] detailing various ways to solicit upvotes on Reddit.