Snoo

About

Snoo (pronounced like “new”) is the official mascot of Reddit, the discussion site founded in 2005. The character is an alien with a round head, oval red eyes, a curly antenna ending in a ball, and no fixed gender or backstory. Reddit’s own brand guidelines describe Snoo as a friendly visitor from the future who came to see what humans were talking about, which is why the mascot appears on the site’s 404 pages, loading screens and the front page logo.

Snoo’s real cultural weight comes from being remixed. Because early Reddit let each community style its own page, subreddits drew Snoo as a doctor, a soldier, a chef, a pixel sprite, a cat. Snoo became a template: any subreddit’s identity could be expressed as “our Snoo”. Few corporate mascots have ever been this open to reinterpretation, and none at Reddit’s scale.

Origin

Co-founder Alexis Ohanian drew the first Snoo in 2005 while still a student at the University of Virginia, in a marketing class, before Reddit existed. He had wanted to name the site “S’new” (“what’s new?”), a domain that was not available. The alien stayed and inherited the name. Early versions were rough pencil sketches; the cleaned-up Snoo with the antenna ball followed in the site’s early logo.

Spread

1. 2005

   The doodle

   Alexis Ohanian sketches a smiling alien during a marketing class at the University of Virginia, months before Reddit launches. The character predates the site.

2. 2005

   The name

   Ohanian wanted to call the site “S'new”, as in “what's new?”. The domain was taken, the site became Reddit, and the alien kept the name: Snoo.

3. 2008–2012

   Subreddit Snoos

   Communities gain custom headers and CSS. Thousands of subreddits redraw Snoo as a doctor, a gamer, a cat, a whole cast of local mascots. Snoo becomes a template.

4. 2017

   The redesign

   Reddit's site-wide redesign ships a cleaner Snoo: rounder head, single antenna, red eyes kept. The logo and mascot are separated.

5. 2019–2022

   Snoovatars & Collectible Avatars

   Users can build their own Snoo avatar. In 2022 Reddit sells limited “Collectible Avatars” as blockchain items, making Snoo one of the most-held onchain characters overnight.

6. 2023

   Brand refresh

   A 3D, glossier Snoo fronts Reddit's refreshed brand system, posed and lit like a toy rather than drawn as a flat icon.

7. March 21, 2024

   NYSE: RDDT

   Reddit lists on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker RDDT, with Snoo plastered across the exchange for the day. A mascot with a stock price.

8. 2026

   The cat meta

   Robinhood Chain fills with cat tokens. A fan project puts Snoo in a cat onesie, calls the token $RDDT, and promises holders the one thing every Snoo joke had been pointing at for 19 years: actual Reddit stock.

Design and variations

The canonical Snoo has five fixed traits: white body, red eyes, a single antenna with a ball, oval ears and a two-dot-and-smile face. Everything else is negotiable, which is exactly why the character works as a base for thousands of subreddit Snoos, for Reddit’s avatar builder, and for the 127-trait generator on this site. The PFP Gen follows the same rule as r/place did: keep the face, change everything around it.

Search interest

How often people search for “Snoo” worldwide, according to Google Trends. The all-time peak is November 2021, during the Collectible Avatars era; the 2024 lift coincides with the NYSE listing. The line never falls back toward zero: the mascot outlives its news cycles.

Data: Google Trends, “Snoo”, worldwide, past five years, weekly, indexed 0–100 to the peak week. Snapshot taken by this site; Google Trends does not offer a public API, so the chart is refreshed by hand.

Snoo in the cat meta

In 2026 Robinhood Chain, Robinhood’s own network, became home to a wave of cat-themed tokens. Snoo ($RDDT) is a fan-made memecoin that leans into the joke: Reddit’s alien escapes the front page, lands on the chain, and pretends to be a cat. Holders are meant to receive Reddit stock, the real thing, NYSE: RDDT. The mascot who spent two decades in other people’s memes gets a token that pays out in the company it belongs to.

Read the lore Roll your own Snoo

Snoo is a trademark of Reddit, Inc. This site and $RDDT are fan-made and unofficial, not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Reddit, Inc. or Robinhood Markets, Inc.

Various examples

All Snoo memes →

External references

• Reddit, Inc. — Brand and Snoo guidelines
• Wikipedia — Reddit
• Know Your Meme — Snoo
• Google Trends — “Snoo”, past 5 years