I would like to start of by saying this is not one of those “awards bad” or “we need lesser awards” kind of posts. This post is focusing on how awards are worthless as of now and Reddit shouldn’t just give them for free. I also added a few suggestions for Reddit to consider to combat this issue of awards being of no value.

I’m focusing on the awards other than Gold, Platinum, Argentium and Ternion. These awards, which range from 20 – 1000 coins, are just flooding up posts and comments.

Firstly, they are misused as Reddit is giving out these free awards and they must be used within 24 hours. This causes people to award random posts or comments due to the time limit. I once saw a post about someone considering suicide having a Wholesome award. That post is definitely not wholesome. This just shows how people are not correctly using their awards and awarding those who truly deserve it, just because they are restricted by the time limit of 24 hours after getting a free award. Perhaps Reddit can do better by removing the 24 hours time limit or increasing it to a week or so, so people can award actual good posts.

Another thing is how these awards literally everywhere, on almost every single post. Awards do not feel special anymore. They are just like emojis which people spam, just because they can. Almost everybody has an award nowadays and people now spam such awards because they have it. Awards are just… worthless. For this, Reddit could either not give out free awards, or give out awards of higher value, such as Gold or Platinum. Of course, there will be people who abuse this, so I suggest only giving out these higher-value awards to users who are active on Reddit and frequently post or comment, and have at least a certain amount of karma.

I know, I’m sidetracking here but I wish to talk about “Top Awarded” posts and the Argentium & Ternion awards.

Like seriously, what even is “Top Awarded”? Is it like who awarded the post most or something? If someone knows, please do tell me. I only started seeing it recently and I feel like this is more of an attempt to prompt us to award posts with “Top Awarded” so that we get to be in the leaderboard to show off how rich we are or something.

Now, Argentium & Ternion awards, each costing 20,000 and 50,000 Reddit coins respectively, are the two most expensive awards on Reddit. Argentium costs US$50, while Ternion costs US$125 (approximately). Who in their right mind would actually buy that and award somebody with those? Probably because either they are crazy or just filthy rich. But I’ve never actually seen anybody award somebody with those, well other than this post by Rick Astley, but this is an exception, since it’s the most upvoted post of Reddit. But those people who awarded it just wasted their hard-earned money on some useless awards, and it’s definitely not worth it. It’s just too expensive and nobody would buy it. Reddit, I understand you want to earn money, but this just isn’t the way. Either remove these two expensive awards, or substitute them with say, 5,000 coin awards.

Overall, I’m not saying that awards are bad or that Reddit should remove them, but I wish that Reddit could consider making awards less worthless by considering the suggestions in this post. Thank you for reading till the end and if there are any questions or criticism about this post, please do comment. Thank you!