  Advice forums are a crowdsourced way to reinforce cultural norms and moral
behavior. Sites like Reddit contain massive amounts of natural language human
interaction, with rules and norms unique to each individual subreddit
community. To explore this data, we created a dataset with top 1000 posts from
each of two such forums, r/AmItheAsshole and r/relationships, and extracted
natural language features including sentiment, similarity, word frequency, and
demographics using both algorithmic and manual methods. Further, we developed a
method to extract demographic information from the subreddits, examined how the
post authors' self-disclosures reflect the unique communities in which their
posts are shared, and discussed how the authors' language use choices might be
related to broader social patterns. We observed some differences between the
subreddits in terms of word frequency, demographics disclosure, and gendered
language. In general, both subreddits had more female posters than male, and
posters tended to use more words about their opposite gender than the same.
Gender-diverse posters were uncommon. Implications for future research include
a more careful, inclusive focus on identity and disclosure and how that
interacts with advice-seeking behavior in online communities.
