Cake Day

Submission 15,458

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About

Cake Day is a slang term on the message board Reddit used to describe the anniversary of the day the account was created on site, which is recognized as a type of digital birthday. The day is commemorated on the site with a small digital cake next to the Redditor's username.

Origin

The earliest available mentioning of "Cake Day" was posted by Redditor^[1] OMNOMNOMCAKE on June 16th, 2010. The post (shown below) was in response to someone commenting that they just noticed the digital cake next to their username.

Spread

On August 26th, 2011, Redditor^[5] randomdesigner launched the /r/cakeday subreddit. As of 2018, the subreddit has more than 3,000 readers.

Several months later, on November 26th, Urban Dictionary ^[2] user Kaidra defined the holiday as "The name of the day your username was born (on Reddit.com). A great day of celebration, which typically requires a post. Usernames celebrating their cake day will have a cake icon next to their username." The post (shown below) received more than 2,000 upvotes.

In 2012, web developer Tom Chapin launched the single-use website www.redditcakeday.com.^[3] The site allows users to search their Reddit anniversary.

On June 9th, 2015, Redditor^[6] rap31264 asked the /r/OutOfTheLoop subreddit "what is cake day?" The post received more than 460 points (75% upvoted) in three years.

On April 9th, 2018, Imgur ^[4] announced on their help page that they would also be celebrating Cake Day. They wrote, "Your Imgur Cake Day is the anniversary of the day you made your account on Imgur. So, your first Cake Day will be one year from the day when you first made your account. When you log in on that day, you will be greeted with a happy message reminding you of this momentous day."