Post-Mortem of r/Nepal

You know it, I know it (assuming we're both whitewashed pseudo-intellectuals): r/Nepal has been dead for a while. It's a husk of what it used to be, and the blame yet again is on the poor average Nepali. It got too mainstream, to the point that it now very accurately reflects the sad reality of everyday Nepal. For some time, it was a fairly small community of regards who'd upvote lots if you replied nice to a 69 comment. That charm was lost when the sub exploded around 2020, in ways more than one.

I mostly stopped browsing Reddit after I became a bidesi a few years ago, and had an actual irl escape, not just mere virtual. With all the turmoil around, I got back a month or two ago only to find out how my boy was massacred. By governance? Maybe. By the people? More likely. Oh well, let's do some post-mortem and see if we can nail down a cause. I took every post from September 2009 to January 2026 - about 300,000 posts total and ran some numbers because I'm a nerd like that. Here are some basic stats:

-Posts
17Years
-Upvotes
-Comments

Posts per Month

Peak: - with - posts

The sub experienced explosive growth starting around 2020, jumping from ~1,500 posts/month to over 4,000. Maybe it was COVID driving more Nepalis online. I remember there was some indian youtuber that started making reddit content too. The most dramatic spike was September 2025 with 13,256 posts, over 3x the normal volume, triggered by the GenZ protests. The subsequent drop is quite hilarious; the 'Genji' have all returned to IG to post mo:mo and achar pictures from a cafe that has a swing that looks like a bird's nest.

Engagement

Juicy stuff here: while post volume tripled between 2019-2024, comments per post stayed quite flat at 7-12. It seems the subscriber base grew, the posts multiplied, but quality discussions didn't follow. The average score per post actually peaked around 2021 at ~28 and has since declined to ~5-7. r/Nepal inflated, but stayed quite hollow. More people posting, but proportionally fewer engaging in (meaningful) dialogue.
Avg Score per Post
Avg Comments per Post

Genji special 2025 september Deep Dive

13,256 posts compared to August's 4,132 and October's 4,573. If you look at the words, it tells the story: August was typical r/Nepal content (help, anyone, college, looking), but September erupted with protest, government, corruption, police, media. Ah, this is so cool! By October, the vocabulary then returned to normal. Funny again, and something I did notice too, the engagement per post (5.3 comments) barely budged from August (5.4). Even during a national movement, mitra haru talked at each other rather than with each other.

Top Posters aka who's the most unemployed (except sulu)

By Total Score
By Avg Score (min 15 posts)
Monthly Breakdown

Word Clouds

This is what r/Nepal speaks. Early years (2010-2015) were dominated by trekking, kathmandu, earthquake other than the obvious nepali, help, anyone, etc. By 2020+, romanized Nepali words like ani, haru, lai emerged - the normies have arrived. Recent years show help, please, anyone as top words, the sub is now a support forum. Raja aau desh bachau. Balen aau malai bachau. We love some support, don't we. The 2025 spike in protest, government, corruption was from the brief political awakening before returning to the usual requests for advice.

Top Posts

By Score
By Comments