Copy this prompt. Pick a topic. Then brace yourself.
“Imagine I posted this on a subreddit called [r/SUBREDDIT NAME] seeking help. What would the experts say? Create a full thread with 50 comments.”
That’s the whole thing. And the output is genuinely unhinged in the best way possible.
What makes it work is the specificity of the subreddit. You’re not asking “what do people think?” You’re asking what a very particular tribe of people, with their own inside jokes, pet peeves, and sacred rules, would say. That’s a completely different question. And AI is surprisingly good at answering it.
🧪 How to Run It
Takes about 30 seconds. Here’s how:
- Open your AI of choice (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, whatever you have)
- Copy the prompt above word for word
- Replace [r/SUBREDDIT NAME] with any real subreddit, r/AskDoctors, r/legaladvice, r/personalfinance, r/survivalism, r/AmItheAsshole
- Add your actual question or situation as the post body
- Hit send and read the whole thing
A few things that make the output better: be specific in your post body. Don’t just say “I’m thinking about starting a business.” Say what kind of business, what your current situation is, what you’ve already tried. The more real detail you give, the more real the simulated thread feels. Vague inputs get vague crowd reactions. Specific inputs get specific crowd reactions, and those are the ones actually worth reading.
Also, 50 comments is the sweet spot. Ask for fewer and you miss the weird minority opinions hiding at the bottom. Ask for more and the AI starts repeating itself. Fifty captures the full arc of a Reddit thread: the confident early answers, the corrections, the contrarians, and the one person who shows up late with the actually useful take that only gets 3 upvotes.
What the Results Actually Mean
Here’s where it gets interesting. The AI doesn’t just make up random comments. It simulates the actual culture of that subreddit.
Drop it into r/legaladvice and you get three people saying “NAL but…” followed by someone yelling “STOP TALKING TO POLICE.” Drop it into r/personalfinance and someone’s already telling you to max your Roth IRA before the thread even starts.
It mirrors how different communities think, what they prioritize, and what triggers them. That’s actually useful information about how your real audience would react to your real content.
Think about what that means if you’re building something. Before you write the sales page, before you record the video, before you post anything publicly, you can run a simulation of your exact target audience reacting to your exact pitch. You’ll find out which objections come up first, which part of your offer confuses people, and which angle makes them lean in instead of scroll past. That’s normally the kind of feedback you get after you’ve already published something and it’s too late to change it.
The simulation isn’t perfect. It won’t catch every edge case and it occasionally produces a comment that feels slightly off. But it’s directionally accurate in a way that’s hard to get anywhere else for free in under a minute. It’s not a replacement for talking to real customers. It’s what you do the night before you talk to real customers so you show up with better questions.
💡 Extra Tips
- Try the same topic across 3 different subreddits and compare the reactions. The disagreement between communities tells you more than any single thread would.
- Use r/roastme on yourself for the most honest feedback you’ll get all week. It is genuinely uncomfortable and genuinely clarifying.
- Drop a business idea into r/entrepreneur vs r/antiwork and watch reality split in two. One thread will hype you up. The other will explain in painful detail why you’re going to fail. Read both.
- Ask about your diet in r/nutrition vs r/carnivore for maximum chaos. Same body, opposite prescriptions, everyone equally convinced they’re right.
- Use it for content ideas. Post a draft headline or concept and see which framing gets the most engagement in the simulated thread. The comments that would get the most upvotes are usually the angles worth exploring.
Prompt of the Day 📋
Start with something personal. A decision you’re actually sitting on. A project you’re about to launch. A situation you can’t figure out.
Pick the subreddit whose audience would care most about it. Run the prompt. Read all 50 comments.
Pay attention to the comments that annoy you most. Those are usually the ones pointing at something true. The ones that make you want to argue back are doing more work than the ones that validate you. That friction is the signal. Follow it.
You’ll either get clarity, get roasted, or get both at once. All three outcomes are worth it.
Go Break the Internet 🎯
This prompt has no business being this effective. It’s free, it’s fast, and it gives you a crowd-sourced reaction to anything before you actually put it in front of a crowd.
Most people test ideas by posting them and hoping for the best. This lets you run the test privately, iterate on the framing, find the weak spots, and only go public once you’ve already stress-tested the thing against 50 simulated strangers who had no reason to be nice to you.
Run it once today. Then share what subreddit you tested and what it said. Genuinely curious what happens when you throw real problems at fake experts.
Try this prompt and post your results. It’s hilarious. 😂
by u/Delirium5459 in PromptEngineering