Reddit Special 

Using a disabled or dead person, family member, or someone with a severe illness to farm upvotes or likes, usually found on default large subreddits.

Spamming a picture of some dude's dying wife? Man, that guy is really at it with the ol' Reddit Special.

Reddit Special by Mlpisbestshow July 4, 2019

Reddit Special

A response to a question that offers non-responsive answer. The responder, rather than engaging with relevant knowledge, deflects by either answering a tangential question nobody asked, or requesting information irrelevant to the actual inquiry.

The contribution is 'technically' adjacent to the topic but functionally useless — it adds noise, dilutes the information space, and burdens the asker with restating what should have been clear. The behavior is common in online forums, where 'performative helpfulness' substitutes for actual experience.

Person 1: I asked the forum how to setup a home server, but they kept asking me why I needed a home server and told me to use AWS instead.
Person 2: Ah, the 'Reddit Special'

Reddit Special by LaborLeft March 3, 2026