About r/self
In its own words:
A place to post discussions, questions, or anything else you like.
Community guide
r/self (#612, about 1.8 million subscribers) is oriented around: A place to post discussions, questions, or anything else you like. Recent activity samples show 67 posts/day in recent samples (~100% text). Public rules we collected include: Be excellent to each other.; No witch hunts.; No advertising/self promotion of any kind.; No requests for assistance or fundraising allowed.; No posts or comments threatening self harm.. Directory metadata files it under “Lifestyles”.
What belongs here
Stay inside the room’s stated scope rather than adjacent fandoms or general off-topic dumps. Self-promotion and advertising are tightly limited—read those rules before linking your own channel, shop, or site. Low-effort memes or empty shitposts are commonly removed—add context that fits the room’s purpose. Civility and anti-harassment rules are explicit; personal attacks get you removed regardless of how right you think you are.
How it differs from lookalikes
The length of the public rule list is itself a signal: skim all of them once before assuming defaults from similar communities. Submission type is set to “self” in metadata—link/text expectations may differ from open “any” rooms.
Practical pointers
Read the current sidebar/rules on Reddit before posting; collected rules can lag.
SubMouse Editorial
The community was created on Feb 6, 2008, which makes it 18 years old. Since Oct 26, 2026, it has gained 990 subscribers (+0.06%). It sits just behind r/UrbanHell (#611) and ahead of r/LoveIsBlindOnNetflix (#613) in our ranking.
What sets r/self apart
r/self is far more text-driven than most big subreddits: 100% of its recent posts are text posts, against a median of 35% across the Top 100. For its size it is unusually busy: about 37.9 new posts a day per million members, more than 82% of the Top 100. Its rhythm is strongly tied to time zones: the busiest hour (23:00 UTC) sees about 4.5× as many posts as the quietest (09:00 UTC).
Subscriber growth
Between Sep 19, 2026 and Nov 2, 2026, r/self went up from 1,760,008 to 1,767,267 subscribers (+7.3K, +0.41%). That is about 165 new members per day. The chart uses our weekly snapshots (9 so far), so it gets longer every week.
What r/self talks about
We read the titles of 496 recent posts (Oct 29–Nov 5), the words that come up most are “life”, “feel”, “friend”, “friends” and “bad”. Other frequent themes are hate, job, person, stop, real and experience. Recurring phrases include “crazy drug”, “drug experience”, “holy fucking” and “fucking shit”. By format, 100% are text posts.
Activity and best time to post
r/self gets about 67 new posts a day. The public archive holds 536,195 posts and 7,202,106 comments in total, about 13.4 comments per post. Last week the busiest day was Monday (87 posts) and the quietest was Friday (53). Posting peaks around 23:00 UTC and is lowest around 09:00 UTC.
Rules of r/self
The moderators of r/self list 11 rules. In short:
- Be excellent to each other.
- No witch hunts.
- No advertising/self promotion of any kind.
- No requests for assistance or fundraising allowed.
- No posts or comments threatening self harm.
- No NSFW imagery. Discussing NSFW content is fine, as long as it's tagged.
- No misleading or fearmongering news or politics
- Self-hate rant posts
- Commonly posted topics/disallowed topics
- No generalized Bigotry
How to join
Open reddit.com/r/self and press “Join”. Read the community rules in the sidebar before you post: every subreddit is run by its own volunteer moderators.
Frequently asked questions
How many members does r/self have?
r/self has 1,767,267 subscribers (Nov 2, 2026), which makes it the #612 safe-for-work subreddit in the SubMouse ranking. It added 7,259 members between Sep 19, 2026 and Nov 2, 2026.
How old is r/self?
r/self was created on Feb 6, 2008, so it has been around for 18 years. The oldest post in the public archive is from Feb 7, 2008.
How active is r/self?
Very active: r/self gets about 67 new posts a day (average of the last four weeks). Over its lifetime the archive counts 536,195 posts and 7,202,106 comments. In a sample of 496 recent posts we counted 402 different authors.
When is r/self most active?
Based on post counts from Oct 29, 2026 to Nov 4, 2026, the busiest day was Monday and the quietest Friday, and most posts arrive around 23:00 UTC, with the fewest around 09:00 UTC. More posts also means more competition, so a quieter hour can help a post get noticed.
What is r/self about?
The community describes itself as: “A place to post discussions, questions, or anything else you like.” Recent post titles often mention life, feel, friend, friends and bad. Most posts are text posts (100%).
Is r/self safe for work?
Yes. Reddit does not mark r/self as an 18+ (NSFW) community, and its own rules forbid NSFW content. SubMouse lists safe-for-work subreddits only.
How do I post on r/self?
Join the community on Reddit first, then use “Create post”. r/self accepts text posts only. It has 11 posted rules, starting with: “Be excellent to each other.”; “No witch hunts.”; “No advertising/self promotion of any kind.”. Moderators remove posts that break the rules, so read them in the sidebar before posting.
Which communities are like r/self?
Communities with similar topics include r/getdisciplined (2.2M), r/DecidingToBeBetter (1.4M), r/ifyoulikeblank (1.5M), r/homestead (3.6M) and r/javascript (2.5M).
Stats from public data (data updated Nov 2, 2026; activity, rules and archive totals via the Arctic Shift archive, Nov 6, 2026). Point and comment counts are archive snapshots and can be lower than on Reddit today. SubMouse is an independent directory and is not affiliated with Reddit or the moderators of r/self.