One of the reasons why I believe atheism has found such a strong base on Reddit is the lack of a physical medium for atheists to often congregate. Many organized religions have formal places of worship and connections in the physical world to other believers; however, it would be ironic for atheists to have a organized congregation for those who do not believe. Therefore, the internet, and Reddit specifically, have provided a connect for these individuals.

Because the main purpose of /r/atheism is to disprove the existence of other religions, Reddit and the Internet have facilitated the growth of this community. Many posts take the format of providing links to memes, articles, and passages followed by a particular religion. The ability to quickly grasp and edit content to this format has therefore been greatly useful for this culture. Subscribers of this channel are provided a news-feed and notifications of trending  content: this would be similar to a mailing-list that many cultures have. Another reason the internet has greatly facilitated this group is because of it’s ability to host a global culture that doesn’t have restrictions on the physical location of individuals: this has helped rapidly grow this community.

Aggregating the Best of the Best »

Often in a community, there are many opinions and it is difficult to understand the overall opinion. Reddit’s /r/atheism statistics are as follows: (numbers from stattit.com)

402,805 all-time submissions 
470 average submissions per day 
1,231,686 subscribers
22,294 new subscribers this week
1.84% growth in subscribers this week
1,784 average users online in the last 24 hours
9,625 peak users online, on Monday Sep 17 at 19:00 (UTC)
Current activity rank: #12

So, what does this information tell us? /r/atheism is a rapidly growing community with tons of content submissions. Because, /r/atheism algorithmically calculates the most trending content and best comments, it makes it very easy to see general opinion. This can often be difficult in a physical community since there are faces and inhibitions to comments and content: Reddit establishes instant knowledge of public opinion in an unobtrusive way. Points are anonymously awarded to content that is popular. Also, because there is such a large amount of submissions daily, /r/atheism’s front page only features the best content as determined by the users.

Because content is often in the form of an image, a meme, or a rage comic, the Internet is the perfect medium for this content: I will list a couple of examples of submitted content.

 

As we can see from these three examples, the internet helps r/atheism members communicate and find resources for a set of beliefs that is normally not seen in an organized manner. It helps individuals ask questions in a safe, anonymous way, and connect with individuals that might otherwise be out of their reach. The content that is shared also requires the Internet.