karma whore
karma whore noun: someone excessively dedicated to gaining karma (“a score assigned to a user or post on a discussion forum, indicating popularity or perceived value”), often by disagreeable methods such as reposting content or creating fake stories.
Noun
karma whore (plural karma whores)
- Someone excessively dedicated to gaining karma (“a score assigned to a user or post on a discussion forum, indicating popularity or perceived value”), often by disagreeable methods such as reposting content or creating fake stories.
- But the site's system is volatile, and not all original content is well-received. Karma whores know this in their core. Karma whores learn to be clinical and bot-like. Karma whores make nothing themselves and often pull their content from users on other sites without crediting.2019 May 31, Brian Burlage, “Confessions of a Reddit 'Karma Whore'”, in Vice
- People who aim to accrue karma on reddit are referred to as, even by themselves, as karma-whores.2020, John R Gallagher, Update Culture and the Afterlife of Digital Writing, page 54
Verb
karma whore (third-person singular simple present karma whores, present participle karma whoring, simple past and past participle karma whored)
- To act as a karma whore.
- Though this might seem to be a performance-contigent reward, there are well-known tricks for posting comments that wil be well-received, even though they contribute little to the conversation, such as resposting popular comments from previous conversations or reciting inside jokes. Such activities...2012, Robert E. Kraut, Paul Resnick, Sara Kiesler, Building Successful Online Communities, page 57
- But claims of photoshopping and "karma whoring" didn't unmask a troll — instead, it spurred "pussyrammer" to post photographic proof that she was who she claimed to be.2012 December 27, Neetzan Zimmerman, “Sister of Sandy Hook Shooting Victim Has Hard Time Convincing Reddit of Identity Because Her Username is 'Pussyrammer'”, in Gawker, archived from the original on...
Forms of karma whore
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | karma whores |
| alternative form | karma-whore |
| alternative form | karmawhore |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | karma whores |
| present participle | karma whoring |
| past participle | karma whored |
| past | karma whored |
Origin of karma whore
First used around 2000 on the social news website Slashdot.
Questions about karma whore
- What does karma whore mean?
- Karma whore means someone excessively dedicated to gaining karma (“a score assigned to a user or post on a discussion forum, indicating popularity or perceived value”), often by disagreeable methods such as reposting content or creating fake stories.
- What part of speech is karma whore?
- Karma whore can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of karma whore?
- The plural of karma whore is karma whores.
Words near karma whore in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: karma whore (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-karma whore.wav.
Cite this entry: “karma whore.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/karma_whore. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.