So now COP26 is over, Rising East decided to cop a quick look at one random online site to see what’s been said about it.
We chose Reddit – with over 400 million active monthly users, about 40% of who are aged between 18 and 29. Although some spend hours surfing the site, the average time spent on Reddit is about ten seconds.
The site has about 130,000 active groups – or subreddits as they are called. It’s this that makes it operate more like a forum than other social media sites.
Typing ‘COP26’ into the search bar, the subject that filters to the top is the Daily Mail headline: Boris Johnson defends using private jet for 400-mile trip from Glasgow back to London after lecturing world leaders on the need to cut down on travel emissions at COP26.
This provokes just over 2000 comments, the most popular one refering to Johnson’s approach to single-use plastic.
Less popular but equally cynical are the following two threads. The one entitled What Is The Point of COP26? includes this post complaining about platitudes.
And this one asking posters what they would say to the leaders if they could only say one thing includes an accusation that the leaders might just look down on us mere mortals.
Whereas if you put in a search for something like ‘global warming’, many more threads show up with many more comments, and a lot of them actually look serious.
So, based on our ten-minute-trawl, it appears that while the Reddit user might be concerned about climate change, when it comes to COP26, they are with Greta’s request that all the world leaders present at the conference should shove it up their collective xxxx.
Incidentally, the Reddit thread below has way more posts than any of the COP26 threads we could find. It’s called “What’s the worst thing that can be shoved up your ass?” – and one poster tells what they say is a true story about a pint glass.
Which means those jet set leaders at COP26 should be alright then – as I think it was only champagne that they were drinking.
