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The delicious joy of sitting in judgement on the lives of others

<span>Photograph: Alamy</span>
Photograph: Alamy

I write this as a person rarely wrong. Which, thank you, yes, is a huge thing to carry around, a colossal pressure – I wear my rightness heavily, like a weighted blanket or snood. It is partly this quality of mine, this curse of being such a decent person, one that moves through life so correctly, and with such social grace, that means I so often find myself a gawping tourist on Reddit, specifically the page where people post a scenario from their recent lives and ask: “Am I The Asshole?”

Recent posts include: “Am I The Asshole for refusing to go to my cousin’s wedding because she’s making guests pay to enter?” No. Or, “AITA for deglazing my skillet with white wine when making dinner for an ex-alcoholic?” No. “Would I Be The Asshole if I asked my new BF not to wear his mother’s ashes around his neck during sex?” Oh babe. Or, “AITA for performing magic in the office?” Yes. “AITA for cutting contact with my sister and asking for my gifts refunded after she lied about her baby’s gender and her due date?” Hellllll yes you absolute monster. And, “AITA for putting my penis in peanut butter and leaving it in the kitchen?” THE JURY’S OUT, MICHAEL.

As with so much of the internet, an entire novel (or obituary) can be read into 100 words. The single problem of a stranger, usually a person so un-selfaware that one wonders what they see when they look in the mirror, reveals uncomfortable truths about their ideas on politics, relationships, gender and hygiene hidden in what appears to be a simple story about sandwiches. And then it reflects back at the reader (there are now almost 2m subscribers, whose handy acronyms have seeped into the wider internet) our own warped concepts of what is right, what is good.

There is something pleasing about seeing the morals of a disparate group of humans structured in such a way

“WIBTA,” began another recent post, “if I wrote in my Airbnb review that the host walked in on me in the shower?” The poster, staying in a stranger’s house, where there were no locks on the bathroom doors, was fretting about him thinking she thought him a “predator” if she mentioned the locks issue in her review, after he walked in on her naked, the water loudly running, the door BARRICADED with a BASKET. Would she be the asshole? No. Would she be a perfect illustration of what happens when women are taught to be nice and smile, and think of others first, rather than prioritise their own safety? Yes. Should she read the comments, and cut short her two week stay at this creep’s filthy house? Very much so.

And on I read, deep into the night, my phone dying in my hand. There is something very clean and pleasing about seeing the morals of a disparate group of humans charted and structured in such a way: a problem, a collection of solutions, an answer, yes or no. Especially when so many of us walk through life stiff with anxiety over just such problems, problems domestic and seemingly insignificant, ones small enough to keep under our tongue, but which so often get caught in our throats. And especially when there are so many problems in our real lives without a clear solution, problems environmental and existential that fog our vision daily.

There is pleasure, too, in the simplicity of judgment. Whether you’re the guy that laughed when his wife spilled a bottle of achingly pumped breast milk, or didn’t tip the delivery boy, or refused to move over a seat in the cinema, or the guy who shaved his wife’s cat, or the one that told his fiancée he wouldn’t be buying an engagement ring as he didn’t want to “set the wrong precedent”, you are an asshole, and that’s that. Unlike being, say, “a shit” though, there is room for improvement – this is not an intrinsic personality trait, instead you are a person who is behaving badly. For, in asking if they are an asshole, they are suggesting there is room for change. And yet there are not gradations of assholery here – when it comes to assholes there are no grey areas; posters must take their crown quietly, and with all the dignity permitted to a man who secretly shaves cats. But in this pleasure, there is, of course, darkness.

Again, I must reiterate, I am a really good person. Like, lovely. The decisions I make on how to live are sage and elegant and will one day no doubt be collected in a well-illustrated pamphlet, and yet even I, even I wonder about my addiction to this site, to this collection of people trying artlessly to arrive at a moral behaviour. A place that debates and decides how one ought to behave today. I wonder, as I scroll, snorting through strangers questionable interactions with exes, through their obsessions with air conditioning, their clumsy seductions and the secrets they want to keep, I wonder as I so confidently judge their flimsy excuses, could it be... AITA?

Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman