That 10-Day 100-Karma Rule That Made Me Wait To Rant About My Landlord
I made my new Reddit account at 11:17pm on a Tuesday, standing in my kitchen in socks with a hole in the big toe, water boiling on the stove because my landlord had turned off the hot water for the third time in a month and wasn’t answering texts. I’d fumbled my old phone into the sink full of greasy dishwater earlier that night, dried it off with a tea towel, and figured making a new account for the local neighborhood sub would be faster than fixing the old one that wouldn’t let me log in anymore. I picked a dumb username, confirmed my email, typed up my whole rant: Landlord on Maple St keeps turning off hot water without notice, anyone know a cheap tenant rights lawyer in the area? Hit post, and got that little pop-up I’d totally forgotten existed. In order to post your account must be older than 10 days and have 100 positive karma.
I stared at the screen for a full minute while the kettle screamed on the stove. I’d gone into this whole thing so focused on being mad at my landlord I didn’t even think the website would turn me away. What am I supposed to do, I thought, boil my water for another 10 days while I collect imaginary internet points?
I get it, honestly. I know why mods do this. Spammers making new accounts to post fake rental scams, trolls coming in from other subs to start fights, all that garbage. I mod a tiny little book swap group on Facebook for my area, and I’ve had to put similar rules in place after three different people posted fake concert ticket scams in one month. So I can’t even yell that it’s a stupid rule in general. It just felt stupid for me, right then. I wasn’t a scammer. I just needed to ask a question.
So I started chasing karma. That’s what you do, right? I went to the big default casual sub, scrolled for posts that were easy to comment on and get upvotes. Someone posted a photo of their chonky orange cat passed out on a pizza box. I commented “this is exactly how I’d live if I didn’t have to deal with a bad landlord” and got seven upvotes before I finished pouring my hot water into the tub. Nice. Next, someone posted a sourdough loaf that looked more like a deflated soccer ball than bread. I said “this still looks better than anything I’ve ever pulled out of my oven” got another three. I was off to the races.
I messed up once, on day two. I was scrolling through a local politics sub trying to find more local posts to comment on, and I accidentally typed “this is so spot on” on the wrong comment—like, the wrong side of the argument, the one I didn’t actually agree with. By the time I deleted it, seven people had already downvoted me. I stared at my karma count drop from 37 to 30 and actually felt a little twist of panic. That’s so dumb, right? I knew it didn’t matter, but I needed those 100, and now I was seven down. I spent the next bus ride to work commenting on every hiking post I could find, telling people about the aggressive goose problem at the reservoir trail, that got me 12 upvotes, so I was back on track.
I actually hit 101 karma by the end of day seven. I celebrated by eating a cheese stick at my desk, which I’d just commented was my weird work habit, so that felt meta. But then I still had three full days to wait before the account was old enough to post. I checked the timestamp on my account creation every single night before bed, like it was a package coming in the mail. “Only 48 hours left,” I’d mutter to myself, like that was the most important thing I had going on. In that time, my post about the lawyer got rewritten twice, I got way too invested in checking my karma every hour, and I even made a throwaway post about how much I hate it when self-checkout yells at you for putting the item in the bag before scanning, which got 40 upvotes out of nowhere. Suddenly I had 140 karma. I was overqualified.
Tuesday morning rolled around, I woke up, checked my phone, and boom. 10 days and 2 hours old, 142 positive karma. I was allowed. I pulled up my post, fixed a typo, hit post, and waited. An hour went by, no comments. Two hours. By the end of the work day, I had one single comment from a guy named u/garagebrew92 that said “sucks man, sorry that’s happening.” That was it. No one had a lawyer recommendation. No one else shared a similar horror story about my landlord. Just that one comment.
I ended up texting my landlord again that night, threatened to withhold half the rent next month, and he had a plumber at my door by 10am the next day. Hot water worked, problem solved. I never even needed that lawyer.
It’s been a month now, and I still have that account. I comment on things sometimes, when I actually have something to say, not just when I need a karma bump. Last week I saw a new user post a comment on the sub meta thread complaining about the 10-day 100-karma rule, saying they just need to ask for help with a broken water heater and can’t post. I stared at the comment box for five minutes, trying to think what to say. I wanted to tell them it’s not that bad, just comment on a bunch of cat posts for a week, you’ll get there. But then I didn’t.
What do I even say? Yeah, the rule keeps the bad guys out, but it also makes regular people jump through these dumb, demeaning little hoops just to ask for help when they need it. It’s not the end of the world, obviously. It’s just the internet. But I still think about that 10 days I spent running after fake points, when all I wanted was to not have to boil bath water. I still have that sock with the hole in it, too. I haven’t thrown it away yet. It feels like a dumb little souvenir. (Word count: ~1120)
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