About This Website

The following is adapted from my blog post introducing this project.

What is "Am I the Asshole"?

It's a forum, on Reddit. People pose questions about things they (claim to) have experienced. Questions usually start or end "am I the asshole?".

For example "Am I the asshole for forcing my daughter to learn sign language?".

About 800 stories are posted each day.

Other users discuss the morality of the situation and cast a judgement. Options include "not the asshole" and "you're the asshole".

What do the various acronyms mean?

In the titles of questions, you'll often see:

• AITA - "Am I the asshole"
• WIBTA - "Would I be the asshole"

The subreddit wiki has a section on acronyms too.

What does this have to do with disability?

There have been some excellent stories about disability before. They include:

• a wheelchair user whose brother's wedding reception would be in an inaccessible venue (and the subsequent update)
• the boyfriend hassling his girlfriend to remove her prosthetic leg around him
• the teenager being pressured to act as a sign language interpreter

These stories (among others) inspired this project. The idea is to collect the disability-related stories in one place so you can find them without searching Reddit too much.

Does this help me understand disability?

Maybe.

The best way to understand disability is by talking to disabled people.

You might know some disabled people, or even a lot of disabled people, but no two people are alike. The web is a good way to expose yourself to unique stories and viewpoints.

Some of the posts might be a good way to learn about disability and ableism, especially regarding areas of disability you don't have experience of.

Does this help me understand ableism?

Ableism refers to discrimination against disabled people.

Many posts on AmItheAsshole which relate to disability concern ableism. If you want to read about and understand some lived experiences of ableism, these stories may help.

However, some stories will involve disabled people being the assholes. A post appearing here just means "there's disability involved", not necessarily "there's ableism involved".

What do we do to avoid stories that are untrue, or posts that are trolling?

Possibly not enough, but this is important.

Right now, posts which get locked (usually by the subreddit's moderators) aren't highlighted (they're still collected, and visible in the full archive).

To some extent, the troll posts sometimes give an important insight into ableism too. When people use disability to start arguments, to rage bait or as a punchline, we can tell a lot about how they feel about disabled people.

There's a story that's not about disability

The algorithm isn't perfect; it's constantly being tweaked.

Right now, the title is analyzed, looking for keywords about disability, for example, "wheelchair". Posts containing "wheelchair" in the title are rarely not related to disability. There are also some "negative keywords", which cause it to be discarded. For example, the phrase "tone deaf" means the post probably isn't about disability, even though the title includes the word "deaf". This isn't perfect, but it works reasonably so far.

If the bot makes an obvious mistake, it can be removed manually. If you want to help, just reply to the Mastodon post by the bot, and it will be reviewed manually.

How about NSFW (not safe for work) content and content warnings?

Some stories may be 'not safe for work'. Since this is a bot, there's also no reliable way to add content warnings.

These may be worked on in the future.

Read and follow at your own risk.

I have another question

Feel free to reach out on Mastodon or by email. My contact details are on my website.