Let’s say you got lucky and caught some crabs today. The safest way to prevent them from escaping is to put the whole lot in a bucket. Doesn’t even have to be a big one, the point is to put all of them together. What will happen is that, even if a single crab could theoretically climb out to freedom, the other ones will drag the poor guy down, enforcing the same level of captivity across the whole bucket. Eventually, every one of them will end up being eaten.
This behavior is called “crab mentality” and, in human terms, it’s the tendency to undermine anyone who starts succeeding, and, in some cases, ensure everyone loses the same.
Structural and Behavioral Crab Mentality
In some social structures this is enforced at the core level. In communism, for example, it is against the system to be better, everybody must be equal (of course, this never happens). In big, formalized companies, this is also kinda the default policy: you can’t just be better and climb towards better positions: your peers will do whatever they can to maintain the status quo.
But even without the structural enforcement, there is a certain kind of crab mentality which manifests in any community that thrives on attention. Like social media, for example.
And, with that, we get to the main topic of today’s post.
Recently, I’ve been experimenting with promoting my blog on various social media platforms. One of them is Reddit. After a period of adjustments, I started to have consistently good results: between 50k and 120k views per post, reaching top 5 in some of the most active subreddits.
And here’s where the Reddit crab mentality started to hit.
To be completely honest, it didn’t happen on every post. But it did happen on the majority of popular posts (think top 10), roughly around 2 out of the 3. There were also posts with a more coherent and supportive treatment, but they were a minority. If you ever plan to be active on Reddit, this post is for you.
How Reddit’s Crab Mentality Works
I’ve tracked the pattern across multiple posts now, and it has a remarkably consistent blueprint. Here’s how a post that makes it to top 10 typically evolves:
Phase 1: Early traction (position 50+)
Some people find the post useful. Voting is mostly organic and positive. Ratio sits around 90-95%. Comments are barely popping in, but those who do are genuine.
Phase 2: Climbing (positions 30-10)
More visibility brings the first wave of engagement. Comments start to be mostly neutral or appreciative. First downvotes creep in, but nothing dramatic. Voting ratio drops to around 85%.
Phase 3: The crab zone (positions 10-4)
This is where it gets interesting. Negative comments surge. Downvoting on OP’s replies increases sharply. Voting ratio crashes to around 70%, sometimes way below 50%. The post starts declining, leaving top 10—but the ones replacing it will get the exact same treatment.
To make sure this wasn’t just a fluke, I cross-posted the same content to three different subreddits and tracked what happened. In r/ClaudeAI, it reached 4th place. In r/Anthropic, also 4th place, with slightly less crab mentality—probably because it’s a smaller, more focused community. In r/ChatGPT, it climbed to 9th place, with the same patterns but significantly more views thanks to its 11 million users. Across all three, the post pulled in over 250k views. Three different subreddits, three different sizes, but the same predictable flow.
The sweet spot seems to be positions 10-15. That’s where you get an engaged and honest audience. Once you break into the top 10, the fight for attention turns ugly. At that point, many commenters aren’t even reading what you wrote. They’re just piggybacking on the visibility, posting negative comments for contrast: “this is ridiculous,” “I’m smarter than this,” “what’s this even doing here.” The goal isn’t to engage with your content. It’s to position themselves as superior to something that’s already getting attention.
How To Deal With Reddit’s Crab Mentality
Learn constructive criticism. You’re not perfect, and you can make mistakes. You can come off as aggressive, even if you don’t mean to. Learn how to dissociate constructive criticism from crab mentality – and the simplest way is to separate action attacks from personal attacks. If someone says “you are an idiot”, that’s crab mentality, it signals “I’m better than you / you don’t deserve to be on this spot”. But if someone says: “what you did could be improved”, they’re talking about something you did, not about who you are. They may of course still be wrong, but at least they’re not 100% dismissive.
Learn the patterns. I learned the hard way that answering every single comment is a dead end. It creates a downward spiral. The more you respond, the more surface area you give the crabs, and the longer the fight drags on.
Adjust your expectations. Reddit can generate insane amounts of traffic, really fast. But the quality isn’t quite there. You’ll get some engaged, smart users, but they’re the minority. For example, from my 250k views posts, I got around 1200 visits to the blog, and about 4 of them converted into free subscribers to my newsletter. The majority has a very short attention span, seeks validation, and leans aggressive. Factor that into your strategy.
Crab Mentality Everywhere
Crab mentality isn’t a Reddit thing. It’s a human thing. Any community where visibility is limited and attention is currency will likely develop similar dynamics. The platforms may change, but the mechanics will stay the same: when someone starts climbing, others often try to pull them back down.
From my own experience, the best way forward is to keep climbing. Arguing with crabs rarely leads anywhere. Explaining yourself to people who aren’t listening tends to drain more than it resolves. Protecting your energy, learning what you can from the friction, and staying focused on the work that got you noticed in the first place.
The crabs aren’t your audience. The people who upvoted you to the top are.
dragos@dragosroua.com (Dragos Roua)
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