Reddit Gold is a trinket on Reddit.com that you can purchase yourself, or most often is gifted to you by another Redditor. You can also get one free month of Reddit Gold by sending a postcard to Reddit.
Reddit Gold has a few similarities to C!'s here on E2, in that some people gild comments that are well written, informative, adds greatly to the conversation and so on. Some of us however gild for a wild variety of reasons, including:
Someone who's been a Redditor for a long time and never gotten gold, 3 years etc. This almost always makes their day, and some of the thank you replies to your gildings are amazing and can make the gilder feel so good.
For the comedic effect of gilding a particular post (my speciality). To make someone's day, which normally makes your day as well.
To encourage a certain type of behavior on Reddit.
To support Reddit.com, a free site that many of us spend hours a day at.
And a variety of other reasons, known only to that particular gilder.
Each gilding last for 1 month, and during that month you gain access to a number of features on Reddit, including being able to filter out subreddits you don't want to see on /r/all (the front page of Reddit), the ability to load up 1500 comments at once instead of the default of 500 (my #1 reason I like having gold). The ability to get rid of the sometimes hideous subreddit themes. And most important to some access to r/lounge. During your month (or months if you get multiple gildings) you have the potential of getting gilded there. If you are gilded in /r/lounge you are granted access to the first level of the Megalounge subreddit system which is pretty much free of trolls and spammers. (If you get gilded in Megalounge, you move up to the MegaMegaLounge and so on up the chain.
People who give out gold, known as gilders, are awarded trophies based on how many gildings they have done, most display their Trophy with it's level in their profile, though a few hide theirs.... the trophey ranges from a Level I gilder, for those who've given out 3 gildings - all the way up to XI for those who've given out over 4000+ gildings (there are only a few at Level IX and above) Many gilders prefer to remain anonymous with their gildings, I do anonymous gildings approximately 80% of the time, unless there is a good reason for me to want them to know it was me who did the gilding.
There's a special private sub to Level III gilders and above known as the gildersgild, a very nice subreddit as most who spend time there are giving, caring, generious people. Where they discuss all sorts of things, including of course aspects of gilding. Discussing their gilding trains (where you gild anywhere from 5 to (in rare cases) 100-400 people in one comment thread. These are wildly popular amongst Redditors, and so many are bummed out to come too late to a gilding train and miss out on the gold.
The majority of people on Reddit do not have gold, some have 3 years worth of gold (36+ gildings) - shockingly the person with the most gold on Reddit *by far* is /u/love_the_heat with over 72 YEARS of gold remaining . This means he's been gilded an astonishing 860+ times (a handful of those by yours truly). He can't go anywhere without people being in awe of this fact. There are a few others with around 32 years of gold remaining, this too is a shocking amount of gold.
There are a handful of comment on Reddit with 50 or 100 gildings - but the most gilded comment of all time was during an Iama by TSM Bjergsen - where a Redditor /u/Arebel "came prepared" and basically asked every possible question one might want to know in one very well written and organized post (normally each person asks one question). Many were very impressed by this person doing their homework and writing such an amazing post. One of the commenters said if that poster got 400 gildings he would 'eat a dick' This started a chain of events and /u/Arebel ended up with 421 gildings for that post. The Redditor "delivered" by making a video of him 'eating a dick".
for more see: https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/2lel5s/tsm_bjergsen_ama/clu14fx/
Gilding others on Reddit is one of my favorite past times. I am a Level VIII gilder in two of my usernames on Reddit, giving gold is one of my favorite things to do. I do most of my gildings in the tiny counting subreddit /r/counting (several hundred) as well as /r/freegold - a subreddit for people who don't have gold to come ask for it on the chance they might get gilded.
I love to do small gilding trains, and love to gild people who've never been gilded, I also love to gild some of the strangest things for the comedic effect.
I'd like to share some of my favorite gildings, though out of context they may not strike you as funny. Keep in mind many people do what's known as an "Award speech" they edit their comment after a gilding with a "Thank you kind stranger" - in the case of most of my gildings, I get all sorts of funny edits, it's often the edits that make the gildings priceless.
Since me and a fellow /r/counting regular tend to do a LOT of gildings in that sub we have a lot of special inside jokes amongst the gildings and the edits of those gildings. For example for a while when someone would say "Gild this" in their comment - meaning the comment ABOVE theirs, I'd gild THEIR comment instead, and the edit would always say "I didn't mean THIS comment!" - and I'd think ya I know So many priceless gildings there, we even have (as far as I know the only only one that exists) a Hall of Gold Leadership board, with over 900 gildings amongst 150 or so gildees. I'm #2 on that list with around 32 gildings.
I've gilded just a . (a dot) - just to make the person wonder WTF?. I gilded a counter for saying "brb got to pee" - I once gilded this newbie so much he said in his Edit: "starting to feel very bot stalked". I've gilded just a "yes" - a "no" - a 2 1/2 year old letter S for no apparent reason, then wouldn't stop gilding the poor guy trying to figure out WHY. LOL. Most gildings I do are for 2 or 3 reasons, almost always one of them is to make that person, others reading the post at the time or later laugh, and myself have a good laugh.
Since the majority of my gildings are very 'inside joke-ish' - or someone not involved in our counting world. I will share those under separate cover (daylog). In the meantime you can visit https://www.reddit.com/r/counting/gilded/ to view some of me and my partner in crime in our gilding wars handy work if you'd like.