Bored Panda reached out to the moderator of the Buy It For Life subreddit, who goes as Robot_ninja_pirate on Reddit, to talk about their awesome community that unites 1.4M people who share practical, durable and quality-made products made to last. Created back in 2011, the group is more than a decade old, but has managed to stay as relevant as ever.

With the world turning towards a more sustainable way of living, and people rethinking their values about consumerism and spending, Buy It For Life (BIFL) stands as a strong community with an important mission.

The moderator Robot_ninja_pirate believes that the BIFL community sits at an odd crossroads for these [sustainability] trends. “On one hand, we want to promote sustainability and buying higher-quality products, which means buying things less often.”

“But since we have 1.4 million subscribers, it means new people are sharing new products every day. The products that many people never knew existed and might then want to go out and buy. It can almost conflict with the point,” the moderator explained.

Moreover, the moderator explained that they “have to be quite vigilant to promote grassroots efforts from the real users sharing items with real-world use. But advertisers see this as an easy place to advertise their products and pretend to be real users.”

When asked whether the moderator sees any signs of the cost of living crisis in the community, the Redditor said that “it has certainly made people become aware of their purchasing habits and what is and isn't frivolous spending as budgets get tighter.”

“However, it might also cause people to have to skimp on things and really evaluate what truly is BIFL and what they are just overspending on. Channels like Project Farm, for example, do an excellent job showing where spending more money does not always mean a better product,” the moderator said.

He added that he worries “about BIFL becoming trendy and that people will hop on the bandwagon and then jump off when it's not as current anymore rather than committing to the ideology (an extreme example, but think like the miniature pig trend for a few years).”

BIFL had a large influx of new users at the start of this year (throughout Jan and Feb) but the moderator said that it has normalized to its regular growth rate again this month. “We let our community sort of dictate the flow of the subreddit rather than us, however, we are always looking for feedback and how we can improve the subreddit if your readers think we could be doing something better,” Robot_ninja_pirate concluded.