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Serena Lopez

Dr. Sharity Nelson

English 1301

16 September 2022

How The Dog Advice Community Uses Reddit To Create Successful Posts

For years and years, dogs have been adopted and loved in millions of homes. They are

often adopted by new owners unfamiliar with how to raise and train pets. This ultimately leads

the owners to seek advice on different forums and various social media platforms. Since many

people take an interest in taking care of their canines the best they can, they join these

communities entitled subreddits that may offer them the guidance they are looking for. More

specifically, they may head to a community entitled "r/DogAdvice." In this specific forum

mentioned, it is described as "a subreddit dedicated to discussing dog training, health, nutrition,

and other dog care topics.." People use this genre in order to clarify anything they may need to

know about their pets and how to care for them properly. For example, "u/Kleenexz" asks:

"Anything I Should Know As A First Time Owner?" This post was published on September 9th,

2022.

Here in "r/DogAdvice," people ask for advice on various topics related to dog parenting.

Dog lovers and connoisseurs often come to this community for guidance on their dog's health or

questions on how to raise their canines properly. Furthermore, the people receiving information

from this genre are individuals who have concerns about their dogs, and those who are authors of

this genre are knowledgeable about dogs and know how to take care of them. Due to this, users
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attempt to employ this genre (a Reddit post) and its components in the best manner they can to

entice responses from others. In a Reddit post, many distinct elements make up its configuration.

Some of these include but are not limited to:

● the post's caption

● the tag

● the upvote/ downvote buttons

● the comment section

The user in question, Kleenexz, uses these components to their advantage, and it is evident that

they received much traction on their post due to the utilization of these features. They used a

solid title, "Anything I Should Know As A First Time Owner?" to their benefit since when

scrolling on Reddit, the first aspect of a post a user sees is the title in bold letters. In addition to

this, they attached a photo of their dog, which the post was centered around, and followed up

with:

“I’m in the process of adopting a beautiful German Shepard/lab mix from a rescue in

Mexico who can bring her to Canada if the adoption process goes well.”

This further draws in the reader to engage with their post and answer their questions due to an

enticing format.

Moreover, Kleenexz used what is called, in Reddit's terms, "flair." In short, "flair" is a tag

that can be used to condense the post into a single entity. The "flair" in this community includes:

"Question," "Discussion," "Answered," "Advice," and "General." In the post Kleenexz made,

they used the tag "Question," signifying to the users on Reddit that they will be reading an
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inquiry made by another user. Apart from this, the "downvote" and "upvote" buttons work

similarly to the "like" and "dislike" buttons that society today is very familiar with. Users can see

the consensus of the post purely by glancing at these two buttons. If there is a majority of

downvotes, the user will infer that the post was disliked by the majority of Reddit users,

signaling that this may be a post they do not want to waste their time reading.

Along with this comes the last component - the comment section. In the comment

section, users can filter out comments using categories such as:

● Best

● Live

● New

● Top

● Q&A

● Controversial

These categories come in handy both for the user reading the post and the person who initially

made the post. Any user can view the most popular opinions, see any questions other users may

have asked, and read any controversial comments. This way of structure in something as simple

as a comment section is a very efficient way for people in this community to guide themselves

through posts and is beneficial for first-time consumers of the platform. These examples are just

one of the many ways this genre and its components satisfy the "r/DogAdvice" community.

Moreover, Kleenexz’s post proved successful, as many others answered their questions in

only a matter of minutes with responses such as, “Look into breed specific training its super

helpful!” and “I would actually find if there is a dog trainer in your area who specializes in

rescues…” Kleenexz themselves know how to use this written genre to their benefit to receive
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responses quickly. Furthermore, many users attempt to replicate this format so that people

scrolling do not skip their posts.

In conclusion, this genre is used to help dog owners care for their companions, and the

components in this genre benefit the users in a myriad of ways. Without the structure provided,

posts would be more likely to be skipped over as well as ignored. Furthermore, this community

gathers together and generally creates a sense of belonging and comfort because there will

always be someone to help share their wisdom. Whether based on past life experiences or

something that happened in the spur of the moment, dog lovers come to this community to let

others know they are here to help wherever they can.

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Works Cited

[Kleenexz.] “Anything I Should Know As A First Time Owner?” DogAdvice Subreddit,

Reddit, 2022

https://www.reddit.com/r/DogAdvice/comments/x9j7ty/anything_i_should_know_as_a_fi

rst_time_owner/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf