On December 4, Reddit released its 2019 Year in Review, highlighting the top communities, trends, and topics for the year. I’ll save most of the highlights for the tech blogs, but it was a pretty big year for Snoo the Reddit alien: users grew by 30%, Bill Gates did an AMA with 110k upvotes, and Reddit took on a $150 million investment from Tencent, which users loved.

To me, what was notable was the list of the top 5 “General Style” subreddits by activity (where activity is measured as comments + posts):

1. r/sneakers

2. r/watches

3. r/streetwear

4. r/tattoos

5. r/piercing

That’s right, we’re number 2! As of this writing, r/watches is 764k strong. While r/sneakers and r/streetwear are larger by subscriber numbers, r/watches punches well above its weight in terms of how active its users are. For example, as I write this on a Thursday evening, there are more users online in r/watches than either r/sneakers or r/streetwear. As someone who lurks in all three subreddits, this reflects my experience. Sneakers and streetwear are for flexing, but r/watches is a community in the true sense of the word. When I’m scrolling through posts, I tend to end up engaging someone in a back-and-forth about their watch, collection, or whatever else. Meanwhile, streetwear is mostly fuccbois looking to get a fit off.

It’s cool to see the watch community getting some mainstream recognition for its activity and growth. It’s corny, but true: the watch community is just that — a community. Relationships that start online and ostensibly center around silly mechanical objects morph into much more. Sometimes we forget that’s not something every hobby can say about its practitioners.

So here’s to another year of growth, and to continuing to foster the growth of a strong community.