r/humansbeingbros: Sanctification and Ethical Reflection on Reddit

The subreddit, r/humansbeingbros, created on June 6, 2013 and home to 5.6 million members, provides a fascinating and complex site of analysis in which the language and aesthetics of sanctity is routinely employed for the purpose of ethical reflection, veneration, humor, and entertainment. Through an examination of the language used by commenters and moderators, analytics on upvotes, and recurring saintly signifiers, this paper seeks to understand the yield and limitations of including a simultaneously sincere and tongue-in-cheek social media community in studies of the ethical self and sacred texts. How is sacrality constructed through a single community on a social media platform? Generally speaking, does ethical reflection imply a particular degree and duration of introspection and transformation in the audience member(s)? If so, does such a qualification disbar a supra-textual medium such as Reddit, where media is often consumed in haste, despite the ubiquitous language of sanctification? What values are represented as worthy of recognition, reflection, and emulation on r/humansbeingbros? And can Reddit be considered through the framework of Barbara Rosenwein’s “textual communities,” that is to say, biographers and their audiences “created and reinforced by ideologies, teachings, and common presuppositions,” or is something important lost in translation through such a comparison? (Rosenwein 2006, 24).

One may wonder if Reddit, not, I imagine, many people’s first go-to source for ethical reflection, is misplaced for a serious discussion about sainthood, sacred texts, and ethics. Indeed, many of the posts on r/humansbeingbros are certainly not devoid of mirth, with one commenter praising a child on Halloween for dropping one of his *own* candies in a stranger’s empty communal dish: “Kid dropped a snickers. Saint in the making” (https://www.reddit.com/r/HumansBeingBros/comments/17m3umu/comment/k7im8ks/). But perhaps it is the reality of this amalgam of humor, absurdity, and the mundane alongside stirring and inspiring conduct that may both help us study r/humansbeingbros on its own unique terms while also shedding new light on other sacred texts. Thus, I aim to show that the language of sanctification and the web of actors in the project of recognizing, venerating, and striving to emulate the subreddit’s “bros” may allow us to think with both greater precision and malleability about common phenomena in sacred media, and––specifically for my work––in premodern Islamic hagiographies. It is not necessarily my aim to argue that the individuals being filmed and commented on should be considered within the category of “saints”; rather, r/humansbeingbros can help us think more capaciously about the phenomenon of communal sanctification––when the lines between author, audience, and witness (identities which historians are most comfortable with) become muddied in the supra-textual medium of Reddit. Additionally, as the dynamic and polyvocal nature of “texts” has been an essential focal point in post-structuralist scholarship, platforms like Reddit, with the presence of members, moderators, and features such as upvotes/downvotes, challenge us to expand our own interpretive frameworks with an eye to post-structuralist critiques. The presence of video shorts, diegetic sound, and non-diegetic music on r/humansbeingbros, as well as text, asks scholars to think more expansively about sacred texts and ethics both in and outside of their own research.

And so, declarations of sanctity (and an implied ethical “bro code”) abound in the subreddit. They vary from summarizing the conduct seen by the viewer as especially worthy of mention or “props” to one liners: “A fucking saint !” (https://www.reddit.com/r/HumansBeingBros/comments/178gaw3/comment/k4zpue9/) to comments with equal parts sincerity and humor: “Who is this saintly woman who wanders the land knowing how to handle owls?” (https://www.reddit.com/r/HumansBeingBros/comments/167rgpj/kind_woman_res...). Saintly actors in the subreddit include children, women, men, and communities––all have the capacity to be “bros.” Most frequently, it is individuals or communities who engage in some sort of self sacrifice (e.g., their time, resources, or safety) to come to the aid of another person or animal that is exhibiting vulnerability or dire need. For instance, a deer trapped on an icy pond is saved and released by two hunters (https://www.reddit.com/r/HumansBeingBros/comments/a1gy6q/hunters_saving_...). Here we see a glimpse of a core trope: “bros” appear to be those who come to the aid of “the vulnerable,” a signifier which is marked by gender, disability, age, and species. In analyzing this subreddit in my class, some students made the claim that the actions of these “bros” or “saints” are often not unique, but rather standard expectations––or even the bare minimum––of human conduct. Yet in other contexts, bros on the subreddit are praised for exceptional degrees of patience, selflessness, bravery, humility, or creativity in their acts of service.

There is also a concern for authenticity of bro sanctification within the subreddit’s moderation team. Rule 7 states there may be “no staged submissions.” A video that is set up to show someone nobly coming to the aid of another human or animal would be flagged and removed. This demonstrates a genuine investment in distinguishing between “setting up” rather than “capturing” a moment of saintly or admirable conduct. This issue of spectacle and performance in sacred texts that feature humans, deities, or animals is a common one, and scholars have taken great care to study the ways in which witnesses to such exemplary figures have worked to address issues of authenticity, sincerity, and humility alongside the merit of recognizing ideal ethical conduct. r/humansbeingbros offers the contemporary notion of virtue signaling as one more lens through which to consider these complex tensions. I might also add that Rule 2 tautologically states, “Posts must depict humans actually being bros.” The word “actually” here is intriguing in what it asserts—what are the criteria of being a “bro”? Criteria are never stated but only implied through a scroller’s interpretation of the patterns they observe, moderators’ judgments, and, I would posit, the emotional response a post is meant to engender in audiences. In these ways, r/humansbeingbros is a site of ethical reflection and a mechanism for constructing sanctity that foregrounds matters of the mundane which can challenge scholars to consider the role of the non-elite, non-clerical, and extra-textual more richly and creatively.