The Subreddits With the Most Comments, Every Single Day from 2018-2021

At any specific date in time, trending Reddit subs can provide a snapshot to what users are thinking, searching and talking about. Sports, politics, gaming, current events and more can significantly boost comment numbers in specific Subreddits. This animated bar graph visualization from u/Balloon_Project, which was shared in the Data is Beautiful Subreddit, shows the most commented subreddits from 2018 to Jan 27th 2021. Check it out here:

Click the video to play and pause

Most commented subreddits, 2018-21 [OC] from r/dataisbeautiful

Using information from SubredditStats.com, Balloon_Project was able to write a custom script in a program called Processing to input all the data. In the 2 and a half minute video, you can watch subreddits move and up and down the ladder with an accompanying “Todays’ News” headline for that specific day. It is fun to watch the different spikes that show up around different events. For example, the subreddit r/marvelstudios shows up high on the graph when Endgame gets released.

Sports subreddits like r/nba and r/nfl peak during key events for their respective leagues, and r/politics jumps to the top for major events surrounding the election, impeachment, protests, and riots. Meme pages and general subs like r/pics, r/teeenagers, and r/funny tend to bounce around in the top ten spots randomly as they are consistently popular subreddits. The general info sub r/askreddit where users can ask any question that comes to mind stayed in the top position for years getting 80 to 120k comments per day.

Here are some notable events and how Reddit reacted:

• At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, you can watch r/coronavirus surge to around 60 thousand comments per day.
• Around the election in November of 2020, the r/politics sub surges past 200k comments per day, the highest number seen in the video to that point.
• Rounding out the last days of the graph you can watch the Wall Street Bets sub (r/wallstreetbets) soar to incredible new levels on the graph, getting close to 400 thousand comments per day during the whole GameStop stock debacle.

What a neat way to visualize this data!