Karma Whore

2000catchphraseclassic

Published September 3, 2026

Karma Whore is a pejorative online label for users who chase upvotes, points or positive reputation by reposting popular content and pandering to community trends. The term was first spotted on Slashdot on January 2nd, 2000 during a comment argument about a Matrix filming article, and later became a Reddit staple that spawned its own advice animal image macro in 2012.

slang memesinternet slang origin memesearly internet memesadvice animalsbehavior mocking memes

Overview

The term describes a user who pads their reputation score by pandering to the tastes of an online community, most often through reposting viral material, piling onto safe consensus opinions, or linking sites the crowd already loves1. On Slashdot, where the label was born, karma is a trust metric attached to each account that rises with well moderated comments and falls with downvoted ones, so the insult targets people who game that number rather than post anything original2.

By the time Reddit picked the phrase up in the late 2000s, the meaning had widened. Redditors use it for karma farming behavior like reposting front page classics, spamming advice animal image macros in /r/pics, or writing shameless upvote bait such as "Upvote so this shows up on Google"3. The label is almost always hurled as an accusation, and being called one is treated as a mark of low effort posting.

The phrase later became a meme in its own right when it was turned into an advice animal image macro on Reddit in August 2012, giving karma whoring a face as well as a name1.

Origin & Background

Platform
Slashdot (coined) / Reddit (viral spread)
Creator
Unknown
Date
2000

The earliest known use of "karma whore" comes from a Slashdot comment thread dated January 2nd, 2000, attached to a reposted article about the filming techniques used in the 1999 sci-fi film The Matrix4. An Anonymous Coward poster flagged what looked like a mismatch between Slashdotter Signal11's total karma and the average scores of his posts, and the argument that followed used the insult in its now familiar sense1.

Slashdot itself had popularized the concept of karma in the late 1990s as a per user trust score, which is why the pejorative attached to that site first rather than to any older bulletin board1. The phrase was mentioned again on Slashdot on January 14th, 2000 in an off topic comment titled "The Troll Bill of Rights," and was formally defined ten days later on the writing community Everything21.

How It Spread

Wired magazine printed the first mainstream definition in its July 2000 issue, describing a karma whore as "someone who posts messages shamelessly on Slashdot, where karma points are given based on the quality of the post"5. In November 2001, actor Wil Wheaton applied the label to himself on his blog after asking The Tick comic artist Ben Edlund to appear in a Slashdot AMA, a post that pulled the site's maximum 5 out of 5 rating1. Urban Dictionary picked the term up in 2003, adding three separate definitions, the last of which already called karma whores "a dead breed" on Slashdot6.

The insult jumped from Slashdot to almost every other forum with a karma or reputation system over the following decade, including the Rooster Teeth boards, GTA Forums, the xkcd forums and MyDeathSpace1. Reddit adoption is documented from at least February 2009, when a YouTube video criticized Redditors for reposting xkcd comics and Richard Dawkins links in /r/atheism1. In April 2010, the tracking site KarmaWhores.net went live to rank Redditors by total karma, and by October 2012 it listed more than 17,000 users with a combined 253 million points1.

The format graduated to full meme status on August 2012, when Redditor tankyoucomeagain posted the first "Karma Whore" advice animal image macro, a woman leaning into a car window with the caption "I'm actually a political moderate but I'm liberal if that's what you're upvoting for"1. Quickmeme hosted roughly 1,500 Karma Whore captions by that October, most of them jokes about how to solicit upvotes on Reddit1.

How to Use This Meme

The insult is typically deployed as a reply or callout when a user's post looks engineered for upvotes rather than for discussion, common triggers being obvious reposts, low effort image macros, or captions that beg for votes outright3. As an advice animal, the format usually pairs the woman leaning into a car window image with a two line caption that admits to changing one's stated opinion to match whatever the subreddit is upvoting that day1.

Frequently Asked Questions

Karma Whore

2000catchphraseclassic

Published September 3, 2026

Karma Whore is a pejorative online label for users who chase upvotes, points or positive reputation by reposting popular content and pandering to community trends. The term was first spotted on Slashdot on January 2nd, 2000 during a comment argument about a Matrix filming article, and later became a Reddit staple that spawned its own advice animal image macro in 2012.

slang memes internet slang origin memes early internet memes advice animals behavior mocking memes

Overview

The term describes a user who pads their reputation score by pandering to the tastes of an online community, most often through reposting viral material, piling onto safe consensus opinions, or linking sites the crowd already loves1. On Slashdot, where the label was born, karma is a trust metric attached to each account that rises with well moderated comments and falls with downvoted ones, so the insult targets people who game that number rather than post anything original2.

By the time Reddit picked the phrase up in the late 2000s, the meaning had widened. Redditors use it for karma farming behavior like reposting front page classics, spamming advice animal image macros in /r/pics, or writing shameless upvote bait such as "Upvote so this shows up on Google"3. The label is almost always hurled as an accusation, and being called one is treated as a mark of low effort posting.

The phrase later became a meme in its own right when it was turned into an advice animal image macro on Reddit in August 2012, giving karma whoring a face as well as a name1.

Origin & Background

Platform
Slashdot (coined) / Reddit (viral spread)
Creator
Unknown
Date
2000

The earliest known use of "karma whore" comes from a Slashdot comment thread dated January 2nd, 2000, attached to a reposted article about the filming techniques used in the 1999 sci-fi film The Matrix4. An Anonymous Coward poster flagged what looked like a mismatch between Slashdotter Signal11's total karma and the average scores of his posts, and the argument that followed used the insult in its now familiar sense1.

Slashdot itself had popularized the concept of karma in the late 1990s as a per user trust score, which is why the pejorative attached to that site first rather than to any older bulletin board1. The phrase was mentioned again on Slashdot on January 14th, 2000 in an off topic comment titled "The Troll Bill of Rights," and was formally defined ten days later on the writing community Everything21.

How It Spread

Wired magazine printed the first mainstream definition in its July 2000 issue, describing a karma whore as "someone who posts messages shamelessly on Slashdot, where karma points are given based on the quality of the post"5. In November 2001, actor Wil Wheaton applied the label to himself on his blog after asking The Tick comic artist Ben Edlund to appear in a Slashdot AMA, a post that pulled the site's maximum 5 out of 5 rating1. Urban Dictionary picked the term up in 2003, adding three separate definitions, the last of which already called karma whores "a dead breed" on Slashdot6.

The insult jumped from Slashdot to almost every other forum with a karma or reputation system over the following decade, including the Rooster Teeth boards, GTA Forums, the xkcd forums and MyDeathSpace1. Reddit adoption is documented from at least February 2009, when a YouTube video criticized Redditors for reposting xkcd comics and Richard Dawkins links in /r/atheism1. In April 2010, the tracking site KarmaWhores.net went live to rank Redditors by total karma, and by October 2012 it listed more than 17,000 users with a combined 253 million points1.

The format graduated to full meme status on August 2012, when Redditor tankyoucomeagain posted the first "Karma Whore" advice animal image macro, a woman leaning into a car window with the caption "I'm actually a political moderate but I'm liberal if that's what you're upvoting for"1. Quickmeme hosted roughly 1,500 Karma Whore captions by that October, most of them jokes about how to solicit upvotes on Reddit1.

How to Use This Meme

The insult is typically deployed as a reply or callout when a user's post looks engineered for upvotes rather than for discussion, common triggers being obvious reposts, low effort image macros, or captions that beg for votes outright3. As an advice animal, the format usually pairs the woman leaning into a car window image with a two line caption that admits to changing one's stated opinion to match whatever the subreddit is upvoting that day1.

Frequently Asked Questions